The characters in Endoro's Quest have a rich backstory. I wanted to share an example. I hope you enjoy!
Endoro speaking to the council at Daonir Hall:
"Before I married Celisa, I used to spend a lot of time at Kaika's temple, outside the Western Landing. I wouldn't call myself a worshiper of Kaika, but I am a follower, of that there is no doubt. I visited there for guidance when I sought to bond with Justice, my trusty broadsword. I even had the opportunity to wrestle with Kaika once, but that is another story for another time.
Many an evening would be spent in meditation on Kaika's teachings. I would find myself sitting outside the temple pondering the meaning of Kaika's tenets engraved on the talismans surrounding it. There were 8 of them. Hope, Friendship, Despair, Strength, Valor, Faith, Honor and Defeat.
Recently, while Celisa was away working on gathering ingredients for a potion she was creating, I had a chance to visit the temple again. It had been a while since my last visit, for no other reason then that life had started to become busy. Between training and everything going on with the undead, I suppose that is almost to be expected.
While there, I once again sat down before the talismans. Two of them struck me in a slightly different manner then they ever had before. Perhaps it was because we had recently celebrated the day of my fathers birth. As I was meditating on them, it occurred to me that my father had bestowed in me the values of both honor and of defeat. Perhaps that is, in part, the legacy he left for me, and for Valasia.
When I was young, my father would continually speak of honor and its importance in our lives, especially as warriors. I knew what the word meant, but I didn't truly understand it in my heart until I had matured.
Every evening while training he used to tell me, "Endoro, without honor a warrior is nothing." quickly followed up with, "Honor defines us, Endoro. It guides our paths through the highs and lows of this life until the day we set down our swords and join the warriors who have passed on to the next life". In time, fate and experience made certain his words were engraved fully upon my heart. I know now that one can not be a true warrior without honor, no matter their skill on the battlefield. If there's one thing that my father taught me in life, it was honor.
But until my most recent visit to Kaika's temple, I hadn't realized that my father had also taught me about the value of defeat, and the strength that can be gained from it.
As a warrior, I don't tend to share my deepest emotions, at least not publicly, so bear with me.
I was still just a young man when the Second Krillian army attacked. I knew war was afoot, but I wasn't prepared for the tactics they would use. Nor was my father. When he saw how bad the battle was going for the town, he sent me away for my own safety. I didn't want to go, but he told me I would be a better defender of the Landing after my training is complete. Looking back, I believe that was his way of saying that everything was going to be ok.
It wasn't long after I had safely escaped the town walls that my father joined the resistance on the front lines. From what I've been told, he and the small band of resistance fought valiantly. Despite their efforts, the town was quickly over taken. My father was put in some kind of trance. Some say possessed. He was drug off against his will by a Krillian warlord, completely unable to resist, and tortured.
They weren't torturing him for information, just for the sake of torturing a leader of the resistance. After a matter of hours, his body was broken. His spirit was no longer his own. He died a death that even Seliah herself could not bring him back from. His mangled body would later be found washed up upon the shores of Locksford Bay.
Eventually reinforcements arrived, the tide turned, and the Western Landing was taken back. When I received the news I brokered the first escort back that I could afford. Upon my return, the Landing was in ruins. Buildings had been burned to the ground. Friends and their families had been killed. And I received the news that my father was lost in battle. I was upset, angry, hell, I was livid. But he was a warrior. To die in battle defending what he believed in was not a defeat, as far as he was concerned. It took me a long time before I began to understand that. And I realized that through his death my father was able to teach me another lesson. That of defeat.
Today I wear a talisman taken from a fallen Krillian to remind me always of that day. I tap into the emotions that are trudged up each time I invoke my berserking skills in battle. Because of my fathers death, I'm able to better understand love, dedication and the importance of family. I believe that my marriage with Celisa is stronger because of the lessons learned, and if someday I am blessed with a child, I can only hope that I will be able to pass on a legacy to them the same as my father did for me."