Righteousness without cost is a pearl without gleam.

[Vortex79]

Furyion the Crimson Tyrant... a soul so old that it'd seen times before Blackstone even existed. He came from another world where his great magic preserved his memmory of his past life when he died. So powerful in that previous life.. that he had reached out to try to pluck a star from the sky.. to have the gods cast it down upon him.. and utterly obliterate everything he was or had done on his homeworld.

He came to blackstone when he reincarated.. as a human, and through the gods of this land and his loyalty to them, broke the old binds upon his soul, that restricted him to human flesh. A dragon he was in the beginning, a dragon he would be again. Through Eon's Wisdom and Ghia's grace.. he freed himself.

It's uncommon in the least for a Red Dragon to go good.. but when you've had everything and lost it.. it's hard not to learn a lesson. Especially when you have arranged it so that your thoughts are immortal though your life is not. And once again, he would have an opportunity to see power and glory and this time.. to deny it himself.

It was a peculiar night, Furyion had settled into trapmaking, a trade he had found lucrative with hunters, a few rogues and patrons of the underdark. He had become accustomed to this world and by this point.. was at the epidomy of any power he had ever obtained. He thought, he had no purpose.. no way to grow.. no way to find strength.

Then he heard the whispers on the winds.. the voice of eon calling through the ages that something was amiss.. the nudging of Ghia.. that she was ill with corruption. He called out to a friend.. and a friend told him there was indeed something amiss. A great evil was growing in the tyranid swamps..and already a small army from blackstone had gone to meet it in battle.

Overconfident, though still humble in person, as he had become.. he wondered into battle..t hinking it would be naught but a few lizards run amok.. and immediately ran into trouble. The party he encountered was engaged with a runelord. Forgetting his last encouhter with a Runelord.. he brazenly walked right into the fray.. and engaged it without a scale protecting his scaley hide.. and was promptly decked by a huge rock fist. The several ton dragon fell like a ton of bricks.

The rest of that night, he was not so overconfident. After being so graciously raised from death by a fellow party member, he struggled to his feet.. the rest of the night surged onwards.. battle to battle they struggled against the dead.. falling.. rising.. the party was more an undead party than the enemy itself.. which was rather ironic.

Then finally.. after laboring through the elemental temples.. they stumbled across the source of hte Darkness. A lich feeding off the life-soul of some poor helpless peasant. Time was stopped, missles thrown, the dead kept coming, the runelords kept smashing.. it was truly ugly.

Finally, it was done, the dead were.. dead again. Only the lich remained. As the battle had raged though, Fury had come across something interesting in the device being used to drain the human and empower the lich. A somber green stone twinkled in a magical eddifice. Fury , not a powerful caster, more of an adept of his phsyical form... used his kukri in his smaller visage.. to pry the stone free of its perch. The peasant.. freed.. ran in fear. Fury examined it closely, but did not realize immediately, that it was the Lich's phylactory.. battle raged.. more died, more rose.

Furyion had died many times. He had even been the first to threaten the lich with its existence. "You may slay me many times Lich, but I will come back every time.. a never-ending sacrafice to your destruction.. haunting you for all your enternity if needs be for my friends will raise me. You, however.. well.. your friends are all dead.. and your death.. will be the last death, the great sleep."

It was in fact, after about the 10th death.. and sacrafice.. that Fury fled to the temple via a portal to refuel his spells while his party battled on. When he came back, the lich was near defeat, Humbled, it stood before a long friend, Ian.. who served darkness and wanted the lich's power for his own. Fury.. had never been holy. He'd never been dark either. But he knew several things that were bad a bout a lich and its power.

First it was a power that controled you.. not a power you controlled..
Second, anyone who held the phylactory (in this case Furyion) would fully control the lich's essence.. and thus the person who had the power of the lich... Furyion found this EXTREMELY tempting, but Ian was.. a friend.
Third, it was a power none of them there deserved.

As Ian saught to consume the lich through abyssal utterances from an arcane book about the workings of Shalnath, Fury tightened his fist. The gem exploded under draconic might.. and the lich immediately was consumed by the abyss.. to which it belonged.. never to return again. Taken by the second death. His party, mostly Kazarites.. formerly friends.. stood agape. One of their own had been on the verge of seemingly endless power.. and Furyion had shattered the glass that dream was built on. He debated with them the wisdom of the use of the LIch's power, but it was no use. They were too hungry for it. They were going to kill him.. betray him for what he had done. He only lowered his head in submission.. sighed in disbelief.. and in 4 timestops.. 36 seconds passed.. and the dragon.. which had stood there.. was gone. The blur showed clearly where he went, to the temple via a portal.

He was followed to the temple..ridiculed as he prayed to his gods. But he shouldered the brunt of what he had done in pride. When they were wiser.. when they were smarter, they'd understand. Ian.. would even be grateful. This he knew. He knew more than any tome could tell. That was the blessing of Eon's knowledge.. and Ghia's wisdom.