Harrison Rhys
From Changeling Venue
| Seeming | Elemental Snowskin |
|---|---|
| Court | Winter Court ••••• |
| Freehold | Seven Hills |
| Player | Thomas McFarland |
Contents |
Overview
Alias(es): Colonel White, the Winter Counsel, the Old Man, the Black Barrister Real Name: Harrison Rhys, esq. Age: 34 (Apparent: Late 50’s) Court: Winter Seeming: Elemental Kith: Snowskin
Character Information
Basic Timeline:
Born: Buffalo, NY 1969 Taken: New York, NY 1997 Returned New York, NY 2001 Arrived @ Driftwood, Seattle, WA 2002
Current Activities:
· Counselor at Driftwood
o Honestly seeks to repay the debt by helping others the way he received help through public service
o Advises those fresh from the hedge to follow the prudence and safety of Winter.
· Esquire – Attorney at Law
o Offering free and paid legal services to the Lost community.
o Specializes in recovering incarcerated Lost through chicanery, forgery, and deception.
§ Forged Court, Legal, Police Documents
§ Impersonation Coaching (Trained Impersonators Available)
§ Memory Alteration
§ Quote: “We can save them without violence or risk of retribution. You risk everything when you take matters into your own hands.
Avoid the notice of both the Gentry and the Law.”
Background: (OOC)
Grew up in New York. Standard yuppie family. Standard yuppie life. I can't say it was a bad life. It was just a life without challenges and without interest.
I went to NYU, of course, for my law degree. It was tradition, you see. Ever was I the dutiful follower of my father's wishes and my grandfather's legacy.
It was then, during my last year at NYU that I met her. Sarah owned a boutique across the street from my local hangout. She was a petite brunette with an enigmatic smile and a quirky sense of humor. Even at the most serious of times, you could see that devilish spark hiding in her eyes...manifesting in the dimple on her cheek. I was smitten. Never had I had such reason for exuberance, for passion, for happiness. We were married the summer of '97 shortly after I passed the bar.
The next few years flew by at the time, each day blurring into another moment of bliss. When my son was born, I swore then, that he would have the best life imaginable. I couldn't wait to become his mentor and champion. His mother and I were still infatuated with each other even now years after we first met.
It was then that I was taken. I was thirty-one. Some say that's a little old for what happened and venture to guess at the reasons. I don't know why I was snatched away..why my heart was ripped from contentment...why I was stolen from my wife's embrace and my son's arm. It has taken years to believe it, but I know now, that I was taken for no reason at all.
The next period of my life is mostly a blur. Dim recollections of a fantastical journey dimly remembered through tides of anger and despair. You see, my soul was shredded into pieces that day. I cannot explain what happened when my family was taken from me. It seems the biggest part of myself went with them. The hollow husk which was left of me wanted only to die.
When I came to, I was working a mine. I was never familiar with mining or ore or physical labor for that matter. My taskmasters did not care. I cannot rightly say what our purpose was there. I still remember the day, it can't have been long after I arrived, when I quit. In the grip of some emotion I cannot name, I ran. Bursting past surprised guards and tired faces, I emerged onto the side of mountain. The snow was deep...the view...unreal. I collapsed to my knees as the guards finally caught up to me. Their twisted faces and warped bodies belied the grace with which they wielded jagged whips and rods. As I lay there, dying I hoped, beneath their ministrations, it became obvious death was not their intent. Death, you see, was all I wanted. At that moment, I wanted more than anything just to stay where I was...alone, bleeding, face-down in the snow sure I would die. I prayed for the cold hands of oblivion to carry me away....and somehow they did.
Eventually, I could no longer feel the cold and got used to the way my body would drift this way and that with the wind. I could not forgive it for failing to die. I don't know what kept me alive in that long period on the mountainside. I don't know how long I was there or when exactly I became aware again...when exactly I put enough of my past behind me to take an interest in the world around me.
It was a long time before I could once again form a body which looked vaguely human, but then again, my new compatriots didn't care. I was recruited into a war. At first, I thought it was a war for my freedom. Not until years later did I learn the awful truth, how the gentry had set us upon each other for his own amusement. That this too...like so much else....was pointless cruelty...inexplicable pain and death. I get ahead of myself. After a long while I noticed that I had become important in this war, a field marshal on the field of battle. Mainly I thought it was because so many of those before me had already met their death. Somehow the death I so long sought continued to elude me even as those new comrades around me died in droves. Others babbled about my valor. Couldn't they see I was begging for death? Hoping against all hope in a meaningful death...something to give purpose to the senseless cruelty all around me...something great enough to warrant the price I paid to get here...something to balance the pain of all I had lost. At this point, only my darkest dreams contained that mischievous look in Sarah's eyes and the scent of her skin.
I cannot tell you how many years I fought...how many parlays I attended before I came to believe that horrible truth...the this too was for naught. My enemies in this war were but pawns like me in a game set for the amusement of the gods of this godless place. A hoax made of pain and sweat and blood in the cold.
They were fools and so was I. How they thought to succeed where so many others had failed, I don't fathom. For me, at least, it was simple. I had finally found a way to die.
Miraculously it seemed, the plan worked flawlessly. Our casualties, while heavy, where within workable limits. A small mixed squad of us managed to acquire some of the fearsome living weapons of this place and get into the manor house of our master. How ironic is it that after months of planning and scheming, after a hundred deaths given willingly to place our feet in this spot so prepared, he was not there. The house was empty of everything but a haunting half imagined laughter.
My comrades had surely thought me insane when I collapsed on my knees into the plush carpet. Laughing outrageously as tears streamed down my cheeks, my face a horrid mask of despair. It's no mystery to me who set the place on fire, yet I cannot recall who it was that pulled me to my feet as the flame licked up the walls to first scorch the delicately painted ceilings. Stumbling out, mind numb, once more just a soldier following the line of those comrades left to me as we crossed through the manor's back garden and into the oft sought cleft in the hedge.
I sometimes wonder if traveling the hedge is inherently traumatic or if that is a sign of the circumstance could drive you to enter there. Days later, when we finally stopped to rest, the goblins that sold us that fruit said we were close. Close to who or what, I didn't allow myself to think about...couldn't think about what was coming either ahead or behind. My soul, once again, grown numb. We should have known better than to trust a goblin. When I came too, I was lost alone wandering far from a path. My clothes were torn. My skin scratched. The only reason I made it out was due to the horrid red pall emerging from the sky. Somehow in my curious quest to discover what caused it, I found an overgrown door back home. If in fact, I could still call this world my home. I learned the source of the flames in the sky soon enough.
I crawled outside of a dumpster near Central Park West. If not for the clear signs and obvious landmarks, I never would have recognized it. It was warm outside and it was snowing. A thick layer of this gritty gray covered everything in sight and still continued to fall from the sky. Cars were stopped in the street and people everywhere walked around in a daze...many openly wearing tears. I ran to a newsstand on the corner...today's date, September 11th, 2001. At the end of the street, I could see a great cloud of debris...a big hole where those monuments to world power once stood. In my mind's eye, I could still clearly imagine them standing tall and my father pointing out his window up on the 68th floor. It took a minute for it all to sink in. I could remember my father, my childhood, and ... Sarah.
I was off like a shot within an instant..climbing cars..dodging stunned pedestrians...a shining beacon of hope and happiness amidst a sea of pain. You see, I thought I'd forgotten how to feel hope. I had shut out the possibility out for so long that I couldn't conceive of it anymore.
Coming around the bend, there it was...just as I had left it. Hurtling the steps and in through the door, there she was...caught in mid motion...frozen in surprise as she crossed our living room. So exuberant was I that I, at first, missed the fear in her eyes, the scream on her face.
What happened after is predictable I bet. It's happened to so many of us. I shouldn't have to relive her screams and pleas. I shouldn't have to recount the shock of meeting my fetch...of how my son ran from me...to him. Of the beating he gave me first with his hands and then with the courts. He was a lawyer, you see. His powerful friends were more than happy to incarcerate me. I didn't even try to fight him you see. I just watched, amazed, crazed, crying...as my son called 911. The tragedy in the world outside you see had kept them all home for me that day. The tragedy in the world was but a quiet echo of the tragedy in my heart. The cops took a while to arrive. I had plenty of time for me to see every detail while violence was being done upon me. Sarah was still in love, I think. At least for this one day, a hero had arrived to save her…to protect her and our son. I tell you, if wasn't a closed fist that drove me away from there...it was a cold look and broken heart.
I was lucky that it wasn't long before the lost found me. The shreds of my sanity wouldn't have lasted long behind those iron doors. Once free, I immediately fled from all help and open hands. I ran and cried and died inside... a cold death of the soul. The icy calm which grips my heart is almost familiar this time. When I came to, I was in Driftwood...having fetched up at the far shore...having run as far as my feet would take me.
I cannot fix what is broken...but I can mourn what is lost...and while I may occasionally slip into despair, I love them too much to take their happiness from them. Someday, perhaps, I'll go back...if I can. Until then, I'm learning to cope here in Seattle. My knowledge of the law is of some small use to the community and I occasionally get the opportunity to repay those who sprung me from the trap of prison in the best way I know how. I help others cheat the system. Unfortunately, I'm still a wanted man so mostly I keep a low profile and hang out at Driftwood working as a counselor to those fresh from the hedge. Is it egotistical of me to think they might be able to learn from my pain?
These days I count myself lucky...having shut myself away from my pain. I have taken an interest in those others like me, and enjoy my role as advocate. The Winter Court has taken me in, given me principle and purpose. My work has become my life. The means by which I shut out the past. The justification for what I’ve done and how I live with myself. I have had some success and gained some renown for fervency of my belief. The Gentry exist...they always have...they always will. We cannot fight them or even understand them. Our role is to be there for those damaged ones that return to us. Our role is to safeguard those at risk as best we may. Our role is to protect our kind and our communities through prudent behavior and wise counsel. With the Gentry's gaze comes sorrow and death and this must be avoided at all costs. Those who will not listen must be forced for the greater good. Violence is a means of last resort, but all societies must reign in the reckless, ours is the same.
I still find it odd how people treat you when they think you are older. While I was only gone from this world for 3 years, I now appear to be in my fifties. Subjectively, my time in fairy could have been that long but I'm not sure. Do you count the days in hell?
Motley
Rumored to be part of 89 Days
Allies
Enemies
Soundtrack
Gary Jules – Mad World
Quotes
"Say what you will, this paragon of the Winter Court knows what it is like to see the blood of his enemies. I hope that when the time comes, he remembers which direction to point his sword" - Field Marshall Desert Wind
"Man pulls 'is weight. Pitches in whenever 'e can. Ain' no rear-echelon motherfucker livin' it up in a cush office, tha's f' sho'." - Clyde
