I got roped into DMing for a bit for my local D&D group, and the players decided to let me determine a semi-significant portion of their backstory.
The fools
So me being me, I wrote up a short blurb that turned into a longer blurb for the currently unnamed human Kensei monk. I might or might not be able to finish the corresponding blurb for the other player's outlander elf rogue/monk multiclass tonight - if so, I'll edit it in here.
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You were always told as a child that you came from nothing.
You do not recall if your parents gave you to the Covenant of the Cerulean Sword, or if you were taken as some form of tribute. Your first memories are of the azure marble halls in their mountainside temple, and the deceptively slim forms of your teachers are the most familiar figures in your mind. It is all you have ever known.
The monks saw talent in you, or so you were told, the potential to become something great, to reach for the peak of spiritual and martial perfection that the Covenant's teachings strive towards. From the moment you could walk you were trained on how to move, how to stand and dash and leap. The instruction of the senior monks was gentle but inescapably firm, and many were the nights when you staggered to bed, hardly able to move your limbs through the pain of exertion.
Their teachings were not wholly focused on your body, however - as soon as you were able to hold a quill, you were tasked with perfecting the form of your calligraphy, and made to copy the sillhouettes of birds and buildings and people until their sketching became an instinctive process for you - the tenets of the Cerulean Sword held that killing power was but one half of true mastery over oneself - the other was in the ability to create perfect things, to reflect reality through the lens of your mind and leave it better than you found it. You found yourself gravitating more towards [calligraphy/painting] as you grew, and refined your skill to a great degree.
As the name suggests, the Covenant focuses their efforts on training with weapons, honing their skill to such a degree that their limbs and blades were nigh indistinguishable. You showed particular skill with [starting weapons], besting many of your age-mates in the training halls, and once - just once - landing a glancing hit on the sister overseeing your training. The subsequent thrashing you endured once they took you seriously was entirely worth it.
Nothing lasts forever, however, and soon enough you came of age, learning more about the history of the Cerulean Monks as you did - how they had interfered in wars and politics throughout the known world for centuries, acting in a way that both kept them a secret from the masses and gained them influence with kings and senators alike. Even now the Covenant sends its agents on a myriad array of missions, both serving and undermining nations in the service of a mysterious agenda only the most senior monks are privy to. And as you learned of your history, you learned what your next role in life was to be.
Upon the morning of your [age] birthday, you were roused by your master, the man who raised you and all your brothers and sisters in the Covenant from infancy, whose face has not aged a day in all the time you have known him. You were armed with weapons of your own, to keep - the first time in your life you had known individual possessions. You were given supplies and directions enough to reach the nearest settlement, and told to make your way in the world. This is your Trial of Honing, where young prospects are sent out to hone their skills in the world, mastering the skills beaten into them throughout their childhood, returning only when they are worthy to be known as an ordained monk of the Cerulean Sword Covenant.
Your master informs you that you will be unable to draw upon any resources the Covenant would otherwise offer you in your journey, nor are you permitted to recieve meaningful assistance from any other member of your order. Upon your return, you will have to face him in a duel, and he gently advises you not to do so until you have attained some measure of strength, lest he be forced to judge you unworthy and cast you to your doom. So prepared (and somewhat shaken, though you do not show it), you set off on your journey, eager to test your strength and hone your skills.
Some weeks later, bereft of much in the way of coin but sure that your skills will be able to compensate, you find yourself in the port town of Lathingsdale, where you hope to charter passage across the Goldspiral Sea to the kingdom of Tural, a land on the borders of the civilized world, where there is said to be much in the way of challenging - and lucrative - work for wandering adventurers.
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Life in the Kulayan Wastes was harsh, but it taught one many things of value if they could survive the lesson.
You were born to a small nomadic tribe that wandered the plains and broken hills as your people had done ever since the fall of the Great Land so long ago. You were born on the move, with some even saying that you started walking as soon as you came out of the womb. You were taught to forage for game and how to sniff out the signs of mana corruption in what you scavenged, how to track game and conceal prints, which prey to stalk and which to avoid. Above all you were taught how to hide, to place your steps and hold your body still to avoid notice, for many of the creatures of the Wastes could pose great danger to a young elf caught on their own.
Your nights were filled with fireside tales, the flames seeming to twist and writhe into unnatural shapes as your elders told horror stories of the mutated beasts that gibbered in the interior of the Wastes, close to cursed Ystrath, city of your ancestors. You always found it hard to sleep after hearing these tales, but your parents would tut and chide the ancient soothsayers for their willingness to scare children. None of the Twisted Flesh had been seen by any of your tribe for generations.
Fate, as it turned out, deemed that streak to end with you. Even now, years after, the memories are blurry, jagged things, scars on your mind that ache to look upon. While returning from a hunting excursion, the first you had been entrusted with completing on your own, a deceptively loose patch of ground saw you falling into a crevasse, trapped in a maze of rock with no obvious path out. Left with no choice but to continue onward, you explored the maze of passageways until you found yourself in a network of caverns that stank of radiated magic. With night closing in, you ventured forth, making your way through the cave until you found yourself face to face with a great mutated beast, the legacy of your people's ancient folly. The creature - to remember it makes your head ache - laid in slumber between you and an exit, forcing you to employ all you knew of stealth to attempt to get around it.
You were almost free of the thing's lair when the slightest misstep sent a stone skittering to the ground, awakening the creature. Forsaking stealth and running for your life, you were barely able to keep ahead of the monster - it was likely only your lack of magic that saved your life, for the beasts from Ystrath could sense the arcane with sight beyond sight, and held a fierce hunger for the flesh of its channelers.
Terrified out of your wits, you ran back to your tribe's encampment - a mistake, as it turned out, for you brought the beast to them. The warriors of the tribe engaged the monster, and drew enough of its attention that you were able to escape its notice, but in return you were forced to watch as the creature singlehandedly slaughtered everyone you had ever known. It was only after it had sated itself on the faint dregs of mana present in all elven flesh that it wandered off to parts unknown, leaving only you in its wake.
The following years were ones of harsh lessons for you. You were able to sustain yourself off of the cruel life of the Wastes, but the thought of eternally wandering its horizons no longer held any appeal for you. You made your way eastward year by year, following half-remembered anecdotes of civilization told by some of your uncles that had ventured that way in their youth. It was some time before you were able to escape from the time and space-distorting effects of Ystrath, but with sheer bloodymindedness you were able to manage.
Unfortunately, your years of solitude had left you ignorant of the ways in which people can be cruel to each other, and when you happened upon a fire in the night, you approached unaware that you were walking into a camp of hard-bitten bandits. Distrustful of elves this close to Kulaya, they had you at swordpoint in the blink of an eye, and you might have died there if not for the shadows.
The fire of the bandits was extinguished in an instant, and it was only thanks to your keen vision that you saw a glimpse of what happened next. A cloaked figure appeared from the shadows, wrapped head to toe in black cloth. He was everywhere and nowhere, leaping from shadow to shadow to break necks and shatter skulls. He was wreathed in misdirection; the eye slid off of him like a patch of oil, and the bandits hardly knew they were in danger before they lay dead. In the aftermath, the cloaked figure introduced himself to you, removing his hood to reveal an elven head concealed by a mask of smooth ebony. He called himself Knock, and bid you to go with him. Seeing no other course of action, you agreed.
You were unused to conversation, but that which you had with Knock revealed both much and little. He gave you a cursory education of the state of the known world, the various major kingdoms and duchies and petty empires on both sides of the Great Divide. He taught you the common tongue, and enough of civilized life for you to be able to conduct yourself in most places without causing too much offense (should you choose to). Of himself he spoke little, but you were able to glean that he was a member of a group that studied the shadows and conducted subtle business in many places with many peoples. It was chance that he had happened upon you, but he offered you a measure of training in his ways, seeing potential in you.
Even now, much of Knock's instruction makes little sense to you. The principles of movement, how to leap and hold and strike with your body, that came naturally to you, but when he talked of forgetting yourself so that others would forget you, you stared in confusion, and no matter how hard you looked you could never find him in the seeking games he played with you. His words still come to you in times of adversity on occasion, taunting you with their obtuse nature.
The two of you travelled together for a time, which ended as all things do. You found yourself in the port town of Lathingsdale, and Knock departed after recieving a missive, claiming he was needed on sensitive business. Before he left, he gave you the name of a ship and captain he knew, instructing you to travel across the Goldspiral Sea to the kingdom of Tural, where others of his order resided and could properly instruct you. He gave you a token of smooth black stone to show them before departing, claiming you'd know what to do with it.
With naught but the things you carry on your person, you are once again left on your own, your destination uncertain but purpose clear in your mind.
