Some wise man once said that ‘Whatever is and will be can be, whatever could and would be will never be."

The story of the beginnings Olen Orpheas is perhaps a perfect example of this truth, which humanity itself will never be able to live down. Olen Orpheas’s beginnings as a young apprentice, his ascent to dark domination, and his current quest for enduring stability is a story of hatred, evil, good, and peace; friendship, betrayal, inhumanity, and eternal good. It is a story of a name.

We begin in a tiny hamlet in the region of Terynios in the kingdom of Wen on the planet Aalam.

Young Boxer Boy was learning the ways of the conjuror under his elderly halfling master Gelfiar, a virtuous old wizard whose self-spoken vow of poverty had left himself and his 16 year-old apprentice dressed almost completely in rags. (Gelfiar’s master, Maero the Ancient, is still alive, cursed with Living Death. Maero will forever die… alive. Gelfiar has accordingly sacrificed every bit of worthwhile valuables to his master’s aide in perhaps one day finding a reversal to the spell.)

And when Gelfiar died, young boxer boy was left with almost nothing. He did receive three important things, however: a spellbook of all his own knowledge, magically bound and fastened, literally unbreakable. Gelfiar, a master alterationist, loved to make things invincible. Second was Gelfiar’s staff, a normal cypress staff- again, unbreakable. And the last was a blessing. Whether or not this last part actually had any viable effect on Olen’s future, no one will know. But as Gelfiar died, he inscribed the holy symbol of the order of alterationists. To this day, Olen can still feel the immortal fingerprint of the mark on his forehead. It was with these that Olen started off.

Meeting up with several other adventurers, Boxer Bon started off on the wrong foot, as his luck in those days would often bring him. At a village magic festival, the famed trickster and wizard Korematsu was performing. In the middle of the show, Korematsu’s source of mystical power, the Chalice of Ariborn, vanished. Stolen. A quick detect magic spell easily singled Boxer Boy in a crowd of peasantry as a magician. He was arrested, beaten, and imprisoned by Korematsu’s private brigade. Soon afterwards, it was discovered that a pair of wily dark elves had stolen the chalice, leaving the crippled and withered Korematsu, whose life had been upheld and sustained by the magic of the chalice, in Boxer Boy’s debt. Immediately, Boxer Boy was launched on a quest of utmost adventure and importance, the quest for the Chalice of Ariborn, to save Korematsu’s life and prevent the dark elves from abusing its cosmic power. On the captured dark elves there was a map. It was this that Boxer Boy would follow.

On his journeys through the immense forest Boxer Boy and his two companions met a genie. Disguised as a vivacious and eccentric merchant lost in the woods, the genie Boromeer accompanied the three into dark elven territory.

But even the honed skills and powers of the four could not prevent an unnoticably quick and easy elven ambush. The four were captured, contained, and seduced by the dark elven magic, exponentially magnified by the stolen chalice. The elves now used their new assets for their own evil causes. Boxer Boy, whose testimony is what this narrative is based on, only remembers his own transgression. His powers grossly transmuted and amplified by the elven seduction, Boxer Boy became a decidedly evil magician, manipulating his powers as the elves manipulated him. It was now that Boxer Boy was given the name Orpheas, which in the regional elven language, means ‘heart of darkness.’ Once a young, fledgling apprentice, Orpheas was now a deadly force. Alone, and under the elves’ influence, Orpheas’s admitted worst act was the genocide of a group of underground gnomes. An entire cave dwelling was vaporized by Orpheas’s black magic.

But hope was not all lost for the realm of Wen. As the elves pushed deeper and deeper into the royal heart of the empire, the king sent his army into his own lands to stop the force. Much to their surprise, however, an army of dark elves with a backbone of Orpheas’s powers engaged and destroyed the Wen army, leaving a prarie of dead soldiers in their own territory. The elves’ final push toward the castle had begun. Wen Keep was vulnerable to a vicious dark elven attack. But after the massacre of the Wen army, the king gained one important ally. The white elves, for centuries neutral in all conflicts, awoke from an apathetic stance and attacked the dark elven army. For once, things looked better for the Wen king. The white elves pushed Orpheas’s army back. It was then that Orpheas and his companions from his original adventures, equally distended and transformed by elven magic, were sent under a cloak of dark elven invisibility to the heart of the white elven clan. Their attack ravaged the white elven hierarchy of government destroying the white elven city of Gonduran and assassinating the elder. The white empire was on the verge of collapse when the dark elven marauders were stopped cold in their tracks. This could have only been done by a severe area-affect cancellation spell, and it was cast as a last-ditch attempt to stop the killers.

At once, Orpheas’s magic and memory were virtually erased. Instantaneously Orpheas became a 20-year-old man with the ability to cast weak cantrips and memory of his life only up to his original dark elven seduction. Gelfiar’s staff, once unbreakable, was now fragile wood. Orpheas’s spellbook was ash. His companions too, suffered. The genie they had met was sadly, cancelled. He ceased to exist.

The dark elven army was overrun by the remaining, yet unorganized white elven army and remaining Wen royal guard. All dark elves were banished. Orpheas was adopted and rehabilitated by the white elven leaders he had once nearly wiped out. Wen’s army would rebuild, restrengthen, and, thanks to a new perpetual alliance with the white elves, the empire would flourish. Orpheas’s memory was systematically and slowly restored by the white elves. This was, however, a terrible experience for him. Reliving and remembering the death of every white elven noble, and the destruction of the gnomish village was something Orpheas would have to live with for the rest of his life.

Because of this anguish and guilt, Orpheas added to his name, with the dark elvish word for ‘out of the heart of’. Olen Orpheas, ‘out of the heart of darkness,’ became his name, one that any gnome, elf, or human of Wen would recognize forever as a symbol of Cain, a symbol of past transgressions, and the eternal quest for peace.