Autobiography of Martin Thedonias Ashburn

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Martin Ashburn
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Posts: 2
UO Shard: Great Lakes
Character Age: 64
Character Alignment: True Neutral
Guild Affiliation: Red Ankh Society
Guild Abbreviation: RAS

Autobiography of Martin Thedonias Ashburn

Post by Martin Ashburn » Wed Jul 13, 2016 1:48 am

Autobiography of Martin Thedonias Ashburn I was born in October of what Britannians count as the year 372 to Drykus and Emertine Ashburn in the city of Umbra on the continent now known as Malas.

My father, Drukus, was the city’s Chief Undertaker – as position far more lauded in a city of necromancers than it seems to be in other cities. Not only did he prepare the deceased for internment, but he also ensured that they remained at rest…not an easy task in a culture where animating a rival’s corpse is a common form of revenge.

My mother, Emertine, was a necromantic scholar of some renown and held a professorship at the aptly named Bedlam Academy of the Necromantic Arts. Her principal focus was the study and instruction of hemoturgy, a fairly controversial practice even for Umbra. Spiritualism formed the basis of her secondary discipline due to the fact the “gift was thrust upon her” shortly after adolescence.

At the age of seven, I began my apprenticeship under my father in the city mortuary. This was a few years after the infamous Scorned Lich Uprising, thus the practice of cremation (from whence our family acquired its surname centuries ago) once again became the preferred internment method for those wishing not to be considered power mad or insane. Again, not an easy task in a city of perennially unbalanced necromancers. My father taught be a great deal of respect for dealing with the dead, both those who remained that way, and those who chose not to.

By my thirteenth year, it was painfully apparent I had inherited my mother’s “gift” for communing with the dead. I discovered the ghost stories of my childhood held more fact than fiction. Umbra had quite a sizeable population of spectral inhabitants. Due to this, my apprenticeship left my father’s side and transferred to Cinnia Dunswik, the haggard crone heading the Bloodletter’s Guild. For eight years she ruthlessly taught me the various unguents and incantations to keep the living in good health, the potions and powders to revitalize the infirm, and even the dark rituals to sooth the undead. One did not fail to learn Madam Dunswik’s lessons, lest one wished to find oneself as a patient under her tender ministrations...

My twenty-first year saw my initiation as a reluctant pupil of the Bedlam Academy of the Necromantic Arts. However, due to my apprenticeships, I was rather overqualified in several subjects and therefor found the curricula unchallenging. My experiences had left me with little taste for the accumulation of power, much of which a necromancer accomplishes by inflicting an injudicious amount of pain on his adversaries. Regardless of my growing apathy, I graduated near the top of my class after four years of study.

I returned to work at both the Bloodletter’s Guild and the mortuary simultaneously. An arrangement that benefited grieving families far more than I thought possible. For a few glorious years, I was content with my life. Then ‘The Incident’ occurred within the Academy walls. The fateful event which reduced the Academy to its present perilous condition and took my mother from Sosaria. While it is unknown exactly what unleashed the horrors that stalk the halls, I can’t help but to fear that hemoturgy was involved.

A year after my mother’s death, I left my still heartbroken father in Umbra and immigrated to Britannia escape my own pain. I enrolled at the Lycaeum in Moonglow, where I studied magery and the significantly less effluvium-centered alchemical sciences. Amusingly, the scholars found my knowledge of the healing and forensic sciences exceeded their own in many respects. This resulted in the creation of a student exchange program with the Bloodletter’s Guild. During my last year of study, my graduate research project focused on the creation of semi-permanent glamor drought for a curious gargoyle refugee that a young elven lass had taken under her...well...wing.

At the age of thirty-three I felt exceptionally well educated, but not as worldly as I would like. So, I impulsively enlisted as a healer with the Britannian Royal Guard where I soon found myself thrust from one bizarre conflict to another, from the War of the Zenith Scion with the ophidians, the fallout from the literal explosion of blackrock, to the temporal schism in Moonglow. I ended my military career after nineteen years, just shortly after the daemon hordes were defeated in the ruins of Magincia.

I next found myself as the Chief Medical Examiner for the City of Jhelom, a position that sounds far more prestigious in title than in actuality. I spent the majority of my time examining the mortal wounds of those who were defeated in the Pit, or those who fell victim to the rampant crime. Fortunately, I was also able to ply my healer’s touch at the city infirmary...they never had a lack for patients. Five years stretched by and I again felt the yearn to experience more.

I decided the best course of action was to create my own organization with like-minded compatriots and help the sick, the needy, and oft-times-ignored of our world. We based our new organization, the Red Ankh Society, on the long-defunct Order of the Sacred Heart which had been founded by an ancestor of a present day co-founder. We pledged to help those in need, regardless of species or nationality.

The R.A.S., in which I serve as Director, is presently headquartered at Britain’s FitzOwen Green, with smaller satellite chapters in the capital of friendly nations as well as specialized research stations where needed.
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Director, Red Ankh Society

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