Knopsen Dhul'tek
Game: Orichalcum Handbasket
Born long before the rise of humanity to the Anklok Dragon-Kings of the south, Knopsen Dhul'tek is a remarkably even tempered representative of his kind. In his early years he trained both as a warrior and as a mystic, both skills aiding him well in the troubled times surround the war between the Gods and the Primordials. Following the Exaltation of many humans, Knopsen became the trusted advisor and boon companion to The Corundum Drake Rampant In The Sun's Ruddy Dawn (a Dawn Caste of the first age). Knopsen traveled much with the Dawn Caste and the rest of his Solar Circle, and in his travels saw the decline of his people to the deprivations of the Fey and other dangers of the time.
Knopsen foresaw a time of even greater troubles ahead that gravely threatened the survival of his people. With the aid of his Solar allies, he gathered Dragon King eggs from the far corners of creation to stow in stasis crystals within their Manse, an ancient holy site of his people known as The Dream of the Sun-Baked Young. Secured with them were also relics of the First Age, a weapons cache for his Solar friends who wanted to keep them beyond the reach of the power-hungry Terrestrials. At the behest of The Corundum Drake Rampant In The Sun's Ruddy Dawn, Knopsen secured himself within the Manse as the Usurpation raged in its fury. Lost to memory and meditating over the future of his people, Knopsen could do naught as his friends spread to the corners of creation and were slain. Thus began Knopsen's Long Watch.
This watch was disturbed many centuries later when the Wyld Hunt gained word of his ancient refuge, where it lay ensconced in the summit of Mount Drakkengardte. Scouts of the Hunt, Sesus Mugen Durandal and Regara Brethed Guignol, came upon the ancient Dragon King who stood ready for them, alerted by wards set an age past. Mugen approached and spoke peaceably as Brethed watched on in brooding silence. Knopsen explained the nature of his sacred duty in preserving the line and lore of his people and entreated the young Terrestrials to dissuade the hunt from disturbing his refuge, to which Mugen readily agreed as Brethed scowled. Unaware of the lengths Mugen would go to keep his word, Knopsen remained undisturbed for several more years until the sudden uprooting of the demesne by unknown powers (in actuality, the works of Brethed, who had become the Abyssal On His Tear Stained Path the Rivers of Men and Dragons Spill Their Lamentation, using The Penitent. As his sacred charge crashed out in the deserts many leagues east of Gem, Knopsen could only look on in horror as the eggs he had worked so hard to save were crushed by rubble within their stasis crystals. The future of his people bled onto the unforgiving stone, and the few tears an Anklok will ever shed in its life followed. Knopsen was left physically and emotionally crippled by the upheaval. In this wounded and distraught state was found by the young boy Sirokos, his forehead glittering with the familiar markings of a Dawn Caste.
Enlisting Sirokos to aid in closing his wounds, Knopsen listened to the child's story and winced both from pain and from the horror of the way in which Terrestrials had dealt with the boy's family. For his part, Knopsen explained to the boy his birthright as a Chosen of the Unconquered Sun and what that meant to the world at large (at least, as Knopsen remembered it). Sensing something hauntingly familiar about the child, Knopsen gave him shelter and did his best to raise him in the cramped ruins of the demesne. To say Knopsen used draconian methods in his instruction would be to put it mildly - Ankloks have seldom been known as gentle or forgiving teachers. As Sirokos came of age, Knopsen received a vision of his old friend The Corundum Drake Rampant In The Sun's Ruddy Dawn passing on his trademark weapons, The Incandescent Arbiters as They Sit Upon an Earthen Throne to the young man. Taking this as a sign, the aged Anklok directed Sirokos to where in the rubble the ancient firearms should lay and lo and behold, they had survived the crash intact! Knopsen watched onward in stunned silence as Sirokos picked up the weapons of his original incarnation, his anima flaring to totemic levels to assume the coruscating crimson form he recognized from his long dead friend's battles many centuries past.
Realizing the boy had yet a larger destiny to fulfill in the workings of Creation, Knopsen explained to the young man the heritage of his previous incarnation and the injustices of the Usurpation. Seeing the grim set of the Dawn Caste's jaw, Knopsen bid him to journey forth into the world and seek both his own destiny and vengeance for all those who have suffered under the tyranny of the Terrestrials. Knopsen sent Sirokos on his way with his blessing and the hearthstone of the Manse, with which to both fuel his First Age weapons and serve as a reminder of his history with the Dragon King. As his friend from antiquity left to make good on his new future, Knopsen settled once more into silence and obscurity, to ponder anew the future of his own people and whether any others had survived to the current age...
