Editing Mnemon Chonadar (section)

=History=
As a youth, Chonadar was understood to be gifted and quite talented – physically, beyond competent, attractive and well-spoken. If he was not the most thoughtful of individuals, well, that was something that would come with age. Everything about him – his piety, earnestness, skill, and beauty, combined with his family’s pedigree – indicated that he was sure to receive the blessing of the Dragons at an early age. Unfortunately, that was not to be. <br>

A curse or blight, something of the sort, struck his family’s household, one that resisted all attempts of even Terrestrial physicians to find a cure. Luckily, the strange flesh-devouring mold was not overly contagious, but it still promised a year-long painful, inevitable, and messy death as the filaments of fungus spread throughout the patient’s body. After the discovery of the nature of the disease, the servants and staff who were infected were killed and their bodies burned – but one infection remained, one of the Dynastic children of the household, Mnemon Chonadar. <br>

At first not believing that this illness was not another simple obstacle to overcome, an 11-year old Chonadar requested the most advanced treatises in medicine available from his family’s library. Unable to comprehend such texts, he eventually worked his way backwards to something understandable, even as his strength continued to fail. His physicians, while of course dismissive of the proud boy’s attempts to one-up them, did note that his initially healthy state combined with his regimen of diet and exercise in the face of his failing bodily health made him the longest-lasting of any of the patients they had seen. As one year dragged into two, and two into four, the war between his health and the disease waxed and waned, sometimes with Chonadar becoming healthier for weeks at a time, sometimes with him approaching death. His skin became scarred and pitted from the external manifestations of the disease, and one of his eyes clouded over with rheumy filaments of mycelium. <br>

A youth away from the schooling common to most Dynasts certainly changed him, as well. Having to learn the most advanced medical texts that the Dynasty had access to honed his mediocre mind into something remarkable, even as his previously remarkable body failed. Studying history and the tactical manuals that were part of any Dynast’s education helped him as well. His previous naïve self-confidence fell away, replaced by a much more cynical worldview caused by his relative isolation and resentment of the happier members of his family. <br>

In the last year and a half before his sixteenth birthday, his strength finally began to recover, slowly but surely. Imperceptibly at first, but then more noticeably, his body finally began to eliminate the strands of poison throughout his body, even as his feverish symptoms and periodic dementia and catatonia increased. As these two factors tore at his frame, he had visions of a star, burning underwater, within his reach, but he lacked the strength to seize it. Half-lucid, he wandered out of his family’s estate, trekking across the countryside for hours until coming to a large runoff-fed lake, diving in and swimming to the bottom. He is not sure of the exact moment that he exhaled air and began breathing water, but he does remember his presence of mind and some semblance of health finally returning to him. And, of course, the golden relic he found at the bottom of the lake, later secreted away from his family’s prying eyes. <br>

Now possessed of a wicked ambition that he understands will be unrealized if he remains ‘just another Mnemon,’ Chonadar has journeyed to the west, seeking attunement to a family manse that he has heard rumor contains a cache of priceless artifacts. These will form a basis for his power that is not entirely contingent on the beneficence of his family’s elders. That he is now understood to be a thief and abandoner of his family on the Blessed Isle is of no concern to him; better than being a mere pawn in the game between the houses.<br>