Tagenadi is an undead Council member of the Second Alliance and a melee fighter without peer. He joined the Alliance while still mortal, but became trapped in Erebos while searching for artifacts for the Council. In Erebos, he made a deal with Hades and returned to life as a servant of the Underworld. Tagenadi has always identified with the Exiles and maintains a strong friendship with Amalius. He has broken free from his servitude to Hades, but his undead state remains.
Tagenadi grew up in Petar as a citizen of the Xorian Kingdom. He came from a military family. His grandfather was in the army, his father was in the army, and his was brother was in the army. Tagenadi dreamed of doing his service alongside them and then retiring on his pension as his father and those before him had. Tagenadi’s older brother, Darudanano, urged Tagu to avoid the military. Oblivious to his brother’s concerns, Tagu enlisted on his fifteenth birthday.
After his training, Tagenadi was assigned to the same unit as his older brother. Their commanding officer was Devanane, Daru and Tagu’s adoptive brother. Tagenadi loved the uniforms, the weapons, and the respect that he was treated with when he went into town. Ready to gain some glory in combat, Tagenadi moved with the rest of the unit to attack a rebellious village. The battle went well. Tagenadi and the other fresh recruits celebrated with some pillaged bottles of wine. Tagenadi’s clouded eyes didn’t notice the slaughtered children, or the broken and burning temple, or the feminine screams coming from within the house that Devanane entered.
With more and more victories, eventually Devanane and Darudanano were offered dragovinian status. Daru planned to reject the offer. He had seen many other people become cruel and distant after becoming dragovinian. Tagenadi felt differently. He saw dragovinian status as the culmination of everything that Xorians valued, Ability, Unity, and Immortality. Daru accepted dragovinian status only on Tagenadi’s insistence.
Just as others had before him, Darudanano became cruel and vindictive after becoming a dragovinian. Devanane even more so. Where before they had been kind to Tagenadi and his family, now they were needlessly cruel. Tagenadi had never worried about his sister, Danaranena, being around Dev, but now he saw Dev’s eyes stare at her with unmitigated lust. The shoves and cruel barbs continued until one night they decided to punish Tagenadi for an imagined slight. They stripped off his shirt and burned a word of shame into his chest with the breath. It was on that night that Tagenadi decided to escape with his family.
Tagenadi decided to take his parents and his sister to the Alliance, knowing that that was their best chance of escaping the dragovinians. They fled and ended up in a small Rebel village that was about to be attacked by Xorian soldiers. Tagu, still feeling that the evil of the Xorian military was contained to dragovinians, convinced the Rebels that their lives would be spared if they surrendered. Upon surrender the Xorians killed the villagers and burned their homes. Tagenadi and his parents were captured, but Danaranena escaped to the east.
Unknown to Tagenadi, Devanane and Darudanano had caught the eye of the King. Wishing to remove any sense of loyalty to the family that had once known, the King took particular interest in their punishment. He ordered Stanton the Mindtwister to conceive a torturous punishment that would destroy all three of the captives. Stanton dominated Tagenadi and forced him to kill his own parents. Tagenadi’s mind was broken and he became almost catatonic. Happy in his success, Stanton approved Tagenadi’s transfer to the quarries of Jevanicia where his body could still provide some use for the Xorian military machine.
Enroute to Jevanicia, Tagenadi’s prisoner transport was attacked by the Rebels. He was freed and seeing that people could oppose Xoria and the dragovinians gave him hope. Tagu joined the Rebels and worked with them for about a year. While he was an asset to the Rebels, Tagenadi felt restless within the military hierarchy. He had come to associate the life of a soldier as being like his brothers. Tagenadi left the Rebels and embarked on a soul-searching journey across Xoria.
On the southern border, where Xoria meets Persia, Tagenadi met his master. Guru Nidiri Sukon lived in a small hut in the mountains, far from civilization. Tagenadi happened upon his hut and became a disciple of the Guru. Nidiri taught Tagenadi the secret way of Nine Swords. When the time was right, Tagenadi left his master and returned to civilization.
In Xoria, Tagenadi heard that the Xorian war with the Second Alliance had finally begun. Phoenix was under siege. Tagenadi went to Phoenix, but found it had already fallen to the Xorians. He journeyed farther and eventually reached Bradel Fields, the new headquarters of the Second Alliance.
Honestly, this is getting a bit long and I feel like I’m only half done. I’ll complete the rest of it another time. This is a good stopping place as it details all of Tagenadi’s history before thewamp started playing him as a PC in the campaign. More to come!
-GoCorral
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