Marian Shadowblood - Hero Guide

Character info, Review, Recommendations, Tips, etc

Marian grew up as a foundling in the Order of the Sacred Fire, and was chosen for the Warrior Cleric chapter of the Order as a teenager on account of her piety and devotion to the Light. The artifact that would forever change Marian’s life – the Briar Whip – came into her hands purely by accident.

Relic hunters had tried and failed to obtain the ancient artifact located within one of the subterranean caverns underneath Crisas Desert, and yet none had ever successfully returned. The teenage Marian on the other hand, stumbled Into The Cavern unknowingly upon being separated from the rest of her fellow Chapter attendees due to the poor visibility of a powerful Crisas Desert dust storm. Marie grabbed ahold of the Briar Whip while trying to navigate the cavernous maze, and found it to be a useful enchanted object that greatly enhanced her strength and abilities. Unfortunately, the whip would also prove to be her downfall.

Marian began to feel some kind of dark consciousness lurking deep within this otherwise innocuous weapon, the which seemed to feed in some way on the suffering, perhaps the blood or souls, of those that Marian had to defeated in righteous combat for the Light. Marian began to sense a malevolent force around the edges of her awareness, which would seemingly, for split-seconds, attempt to take control before she could shake it loose. Marian suspected either the whip’s involvement or the soundness of her own psyche, and yet was loathe to part with such a powerful weapon that so ideally suited her warrior-cleric duties. Her defenses against this mental onslaught were weakest during battle when she raised the whip to strike her enemies down. The frequent attacks on the sanctity of her mind forced Marian pray to the Goddess of the Light and her Duke constantly during enemy engagements in a desperate to ward off the entity that seemed to surround her thoughts at these moments.

Marian remained confident that she could maintain the sanctity of her mind against these intrusions owing to the purity of her faith: after all, her order was founded by the Holy King Carlos, as pure an emissary of the light is there ever was, and who exemplified the justice and inevitability of their cause. Increasingly disturbing revelations about the very different path away from the Light taken by his descendant Nicklaus brought Marian to a fundamental crisis of faith. She persisted for a time, telling herself that the descendants of the Holy King and the rightful Duke anointed by the Goddess must be justified somehow. She maintained the fiction very well until the suffering cries of her people wounded by Lasir’s very own Darkturned army became impossible to ignore. Marian had seen the truth and with it, her faith was gone.

The dark entity channeled by Marian’s weapon found its chance in the moment she took up the Soul Briar to protect her townsfolk from the darkling troops of Lasir. Marian had no prayers to say, no faith to turn to against its attacks, and little by little her mind fell under the Dark’s sway and its mental manipulations when at her most vulnerable. Marian dropped her defenses and in that instant the ancient, evil power rushed inside. She fell down on the ground, consumed by its Dark Abyss.

Marian awoke sometime later to look out upon the world not with the pure eyes of Marian the Righteous but the soulless grey eyes of Marian the Butcher and servant of the Dark. Marian soon afterward slaughtered her own townsfolk alongside the other darklings with a viciousness that shocked even they. She had become a pure puppet of the Dark, a quasi-soulless entity dedicated to the fulfillment of Nicklaus’ every whim…