Elliot Brown

Childhood

Elliot Brown's parents, poor dirt-farmers in the Myrken countryside, had three children, an eldest boy and two younger daughters. When the younger girl was two years old, his parents lost a fourth child due to an infant illness turning them off of the idea of having future children. Six years later Elliot was born. He was a mistake. That they had a third daughter a year after he was born showed that they were mistake prone more than anything.

Elliot was very much left to himself as a child. His parents and elder siblings were busy with the farm having had years to fall into routines without him. Mainly, he got in the way. He never got along with his younger sister who constantly had to compete with him for attention and almost always won. His mother parented through the use of old wive's tales which were meant to keep him on the straight and narrow. It worked to make him superstitious, not well behaved. Most of his childhood days were spent tagging along other, older children from other farms who tolerated him or trying to shake off clingy younger children who he could barely tolerate.

Knighthood

While Elliot isn't entirely sure how old he was when he ran way from home, it was somewhere around nine or ten. In 207, Myrken experienced its worst summer drought in ages and young Elliot, feeling himself a burden and with a few too many stories in his head ran away from home. He ran to the Chapter House of the newly immigrated Shepherd Knights of the Silver Staff where he was taken in and made a squire to a Sir Tyroc. Here he also worked whatever odd jobs he could to send money back to his family.

During the battle of Snowstill, Elliot was attached to the rear guard due to his youth. Before his eyes he watched his knights and fellow squires get cut down by the Ashfiend's undead forces. More horrifying by far was watching his fallen comrades rise up to join the enemy ranks as zombies. Not knowing what else to do, Elliot took a torch and rushed across the battlefield burning the bodies of the newly dead, a necessary act that would traumatize him for years to come.

Sir Tyroc died in the battle as did many of the other knights, leaving the Order severely depleted and with far more knights than squires. Elliot would continue to train as part of a common pool but he would spend less and less time at the chapter house over the next few years.

Niall

Also on the battlefield was a scarred, tattooed girl who did not seem much older than Elliot. This was Niall and the two soon began an unlikely friendship centered around their roles in the battle and a lack of having anyone else. She was an outsider to Myrken and to their society in general and he endeavored to teach her and help her find her place in a world that she did not make. When his Pa died of exertion in early 209, Niall came back with him for the funeral.

Elliot and Niall continued grow closer as friends, though not necessarily warmer, for the next year even as Elliot continued to train at the Chapter House. Then in spring of 210, in order to get leverage over her and make her more tractable, Glenn Burnie began to drug the shipments of the chocolate drink Niall was so fond of. She became more emotional and lighthearted. Around this time, she and Elliot, who often partook of the drink as well, started to wander around the forest and countryside. The combination of the drug and Niall's magic created for hallucinatory adventures where the pair faced off against giant shadow monsters and surreal magical beings. During this dreamlike time, Elliot also befriended Catch, looking to him as a wayward surrogate family member.

It was Catch who ultimately uncovered the problem with the chocolate, forcing Glenn to both remove it from circulation in the summer of 211 and pin the blame on Suede Roschen. Niall, now enraged and volatile, confronted the tailor but he managed to escape with his life. During their twisted adventures under the influence of the drug, Elliot had grown into something of a hedge squire, no longer living at the remnants of the Chapter House. He had also grown far closer to Niall, becoming fond of the emotional range she showed at the time and enjoying her presence in a world where every day was a fantastical adventure. With the end of the chocolate, she closed up again, becoming more hostile and angry and leaving him feeling increasingly lost.

Daggers

During this time Elliot drifted further and further away from Niall. He also spent more and more time at the Broken Dagger, being a loud and general nuisance. This had various repercussions. The first was being stabbed by Jirai. This brought him close to death and only Catch's timely intervention saved him. The second was having a dagger tossed at him by Solena. It was just a warning shot but he still picked it up and claimed it as his own out of pure stubbornness. By mid autum of 211, Solena had tracked him down and had begun teaching how to defend himself with those Daggers. He had forsaken his giant sword, dubbed 'the world' by Catch, as it had proved useless to him against someone as swift as Jirai.

At first, he simply learned how to use the Daggers. More and more, however, Solena began to teach him about balance and the beginnings of thievery skills. He still identified himself as a squire, so while the two were starting to open up to one another, his tutelage was still fairly narrow in focus. His self-identification was shattered in January of 212 when Marshall Renea Sundance refused to allow him entrance to the cell where she was watching over the imprisoned Catch citing his association with Solena as the reason why. With that line crossed, he began to allow the elf to teach him broader things, revealing a natural talent for lockpicking.

Nova

Throughout the spring of 212, Elliot grew more confident, daring and brazen in his actions. Being a thief allowed him both a financial and emotional freedom that he had never possessed before as well as a sense of security. At first it was all instinct and impulse but both his teacher and Suede Roschen independently worked to scare him straight and put a bit more sense into his actions. He also started to spend time with Niall again, still guiltily missing who she had been under the influence of the chocolate but now more confident and able to stand with her as an equal.

Around this time he met the peculiar girl named Nova, a magical entity bound to an amulet who possessed pale skin and a tail. As he was want to do, he began their interactions by being xenophobic and brusque but before long her positive demeanor and endearing mannerisms began to win him over. It soon became his quest to free her from the amulet. Unfortunately, Myrken Wood's established mages and great thinkers proved to be inattentive and unhelpful causing Elliot to become more disgruntled and rebellious. If the system wouldn't help him, he'd take what he needed and do what he had to. In this case, that was dropping his giant sword off of the dagger onto the amulet, shattering it and damaging the sword.

Although this freed Nova, it also weakened her significantly. Just as Cinnabar Calomel had warned him weeks before, he found himself supporting her while she healed. This need, along with his increased dissatisfaction with the establishment caused an uptick in his illicit activities, one that would last far past Nova's recovery. By now he had passed the point of no return and began to find pride, not shame in his actions.

Life and Times of a Myrken Wood Rogue

As Elliot began to more thoroughly ply his trade, he began to make friends and enemies around town. Marek Waldemar, mill owner, possessed a crotchety and pious nature that made him an ideal target. The fae Zilliah often reacted to strong emotions which drew him to Elliot and also made him wish to create mischief around him. It was due to Zilliah's actions that Elliot came to possess a ring of Solena's, one that protected his mind from mental intrusion. It was that ring that kept him safe from Rhaena Olwak whose prissy ways belied her previous personality traits and who Elliot saw as an extreme hypocrite. The boy Cherny started as a friend but soon the two ended up at odds due to the lad's honest nature and the strong pride that both shared. On the other hand, the urchin Cat soon ended up taken under his wing.

Meanwhile, Elliot continued his training. His skill at picking locks was ever increasing but he could not best a particular box owned by Solena. In order to work on the hardest locks he could think of, he infiltrated Darkenhold, searching for it in Ariane Emory's room. Upon being caught, he offered to trade his services in exchange for room and board. He realized, however, that he needed Solena's permission first as well as to increase his knowledge of locks. Upon speaking with Solena she reassured him that he was free to make his own decisions. Shortly thereafter, he began to use his ill-gotten gains to buck the normal apprentice system and start working with various blacksmiths in town, showing an immediate deftness when it came to fine work and the understanding of locks.

Teenage Kicks

As 212 came to a close, Elliot was spending more and more time with both Nova and Niall. Niall approved of his dagger-training but not of stealing from others. In Nova, he saw a delicate disposition and did not wish to upset her with knowledge of what he did. He continued to balance these relations his ever-liberating nighttime excursions, always taking care not to hurt either young lady. This was further complicated during a particularly homicidal interaction with Niall when they almost killed the potion-maker Raia in cold blood; in this moment, he saw life and emotion come out of her once again, realizing that when they were at their very worst he and she were the best for each other.

Two new influences would soon enter his life. The first was Gloria Wynsee, a foreigner a few years younger than he who possessed a stubborn streak to match his own. Through sheer perseverance and attacking him directly at the weakest points of his walls, the two stumbled into a rather reluctant friendship. In order to prove the depth of her nature and breadth of her experience, Gloria attempted to scare Elliot by sending a roughly made whip, the sort she once used upon others back in her homeland, down near his back. Elliot, stubborn and frustrated, leaned into the blow, sealing their unusual friendship with blood and pain and meaning.

The second was Galacia Tarin Talus Vraal, the dreamwitch used in stories by Myrken mothers to scare their children into behaving. Elliot met her shortly after Solena had gone away on business. He was frustrated that she had not told him more of what was going on and doubly so due to a prank with drugged drinks that she wished to perform that reminded him of the drugged chocolate. He still admired his mentor but he was also ready to strike out more on his own. Galacia he first saw battling Aleksei River, who he still resented for being unable and unwilling to help with Nova months before. She entered his dreams and he tried to sell out Aleksei almost immediately. This interested her and as they subsequently interacted, he became more and more brazen to her. She began to visit his dreams more often, inspiring him to greatness and darkness and to think more about his decisions than ever before. Through speaking with her, he came to the realization that he did not want to choose between Niall and Nova but instead would settle for nothing less than to have both of them. Pleased with his initiative Galacia provided him with one of her talons, with which he could cut through magic and an onyx pendant to link the two of them. She would, however, withdraw to other dreams and planes shortly thereafter.

After months of training with blacksmiths, Elliot finally returned to Darkenhold where Ariane Emory attempted to prevent him from moving in. He accepted all of her terms, however and moved his things, starting to help redesign their defenses and learning the fine art of disguising one's self from Sylvius Duquesne. Solena returned at about this time and Elliot rode a borrowed horse to Myrkentown to train with her and Cat every morning. Zilliah, however, cut all ties with the teenager after he spent time with the fae's former lover Snowy, ultimately taking her side the ongoing argument between the two. He also attempted to take Nova along on his thieving missions, wanting her to be more of a part of that life once she showed willingness, but her light and pale skin caused him to be identified, leading to a need to constantly run from Constables an unfortunate lessening of daily time spent with one another.

The Tangled Web

Although Elliot visited the Dagger less now that he wasn't living in Myrkentown proper, he soon came into contact with the woman Whelp and the dark creature living inside of her, It. Niall took an interest in the creature due to a magical harmony between the two. At first, Elliot, much like his early experiences with Nova, wanted nothing to do with the possessed wildling, but he quickly fell victim to a magical accident, snatched into a kiss by It during a backlash of power between her and Niall. This caused his intense and confusing feelings for the scarred battlemage at her very worst to conflate with It, leaving him dazed and confused, hungover and vulnerable whenever he was near Whelp.

It took advantage of his weakness, using the dark magic of its nature to reawaken Elliot's ambition which had grown complacent in Galacia's absence and amidst all of his recent victories. His ring protected him from the some of It's power. He was naturally beginning to recover over time, but not before Nova walked in upon him in It's clutches, the creature's vile magic sickening the pale girl and leading her to fear and despair. Meanwhile, Gloria having grown closer to Elliot in many oblique and obtuse ways over the months before, and afflicted by a cursed dream that portrayed him as a force for darkness, had been attempting to pull him away from It through both fisticuffs and letters. In this case, she pulled Nova away physically in order to explain the situation to the pale woman in her own underinformed Jerno way.

Therefore, when Rhaena Olwak visited Nova a few days later, she had dread in her heart. Rhaena convinced her that it was the ring causing all of Elliot's 'sickness.' In response, Nova managed to remove it from his finger during a particularly aggressive, It-inspired kiss and secret it away. By this point, the energies of the magical feedback had mostly dissipated on their own. The impulse that drove him to kiss Nova aggressively used up most of the last of it. Two days later, he was able to track an increasingly guilty Nova down and retrieve the ring. Convincing Gloria that he was himself again was trickier. In the end, his ambition reawakened once more he returned to Whelp, letting her know that he would support her against It for the chance to spite the creature as much as for anything else.