Bishop Crow's Story (Tobyverse)
Oh, for you to know the things that I have seen.
They will not stop, of that, I can assure you. Madness and self destruction are their daily bread, thanking the world that shares with them her bounty with poison and neglect. They are not savages to be pitied for their ignorance, but ungrateful wretches, devouring and despoiling all before them with nary a word of thanks or step toward their own survival. For the human knows what it does, it knows the culmination of it's poisons and foolishness and greed will lead to no destination but extinction. But it does not rise. Humanity is content to wallow in it's own filth, content to allow that filth to touch every corner of the world.
I am not.
In essence, I do not oppose the human in his quest. From its actions, it must desire its extinction above all else, and I will gladly allow it this. But I cannot tolerate it's mad decree that it leave a plain carpeted in filth, a field bereft of life. The mad ape dances on the precipice of extermination, slathering all around it with failure and excrement. It is our plan - no, our complete duty - to give him a merciful push into the abyss.
Hatred grows with time. If it is allowed, it can grow for hundreds of years. Such was the fate of a young boy in Scotland, near the end of the sixteen hundreds.
On his seventh birthday, his hair fell out, and in it's place grew a mass of black feathers. His superstitious, drunkard father blamed the boy's mother, and took her life. The boy was beaten down and left for dead outside the village. Rain fell on the father as he returned home. The next morning, the boy was gone. That same day, a typhoon swallowed the entire town, and not a soul survived.
For three years, the boy wandered the isle, alone and lost to himself. Everywhere he went, the raw power that inhabited him flew free, and disaster haunted his every footstep. Then, one night when his strength had left him, he rested under a gnarled tree. His sadness and desperation called the rains, and as he slept, the dirt turned to mud and he sunk below.
It was by chance, or perhaps by the fickle hand of destiny, that he awoke in the crystal cave of Merlin Ambrosius.
He lived there for some time, studying magic under the legendary enchanter. Merlin took him in gladly, and told him of the blessing and curse of those with faerie blood. And as he studied, he learned to control his gift, honing it's limits until not only did the rains only come when he called them, but they did perform as he demanded.
The day came, then, when it was the young boy's time to leave, for he had studied much, and his power was his alone. Merlin bid him farewell, for the time he would once again walk the earth had not yet arrived. The young boy, now a young man, did not leave alone, however. There was a girl who came with him,one who, like himself, had come to Merlin to control her power. The future was an open book to her, and it's images tormented her greatly, all dancing before her like a grand parade. But Merlin aided her, and the vision came only when she willed them. Both were skilled in magic, and both were deeply in love.
They traveled together for some time, finally enjoying the lives that they had never truely had. Through each other, they may have become the guiding lights in a chaotic time. But fate is too cruel a mistress to allow such a thing.
The young man one day decided he should marry his love. He called the winds to carry him into the sky, and traveled to the highest mountaintop, where he new sat the purest of moonstones. He returned with it in hand, and found a sight of pure horror. The villagers in the town they stayed in had found the girl guilty of witchcraft, and the young man returned to see the ashes that remained of his true love.
Another loved one lost, but sadness and fear, great though they were, lost to pure rage. The town was destroyed by lightning and wind, but this time, the young man was unbroken. A cold flame had been lit within his heart, one that would never truely go out. He new the truth; only Changelings had the capacity for goodness. And humans... those without souls were doomed to die.
The rest of his history is soaked in blood. he reached out in malice to the world around him, madly turning human against human in a mad desire for extinction and the collapse of society. He created death-cult after death-cult, revolution after revolution, anything to speed the decay and destruction of the human race. He was relentless, and even time could not slow him down, as he used magic to end it's power over his form.
Centuries passed. His name could be attributed to radical eco-terrorism, as his disgust grew for the human disregard for the last few green places. But his rage was simply geared toward annihilation.
Now, with the Advent, his goal is rebirth, He has established a massive network of Changeling terrorists, eager, bitter followers of his cold and brutal manifesto. His name? Forgotten, but Merlin rechristened him Bishop Crow, and he wears that name into battle.
