Laran Gorge

Originally he is from the Magic Zone. His family home fell under the territory of the Federation of Magic. The Federation of Magic lorded over their kingdom, abusing and killing their subjects as they pleased. His family were little more than slaves to one of these powerful mages - the wizard Lord Peran. At least under his protection they were safe from the other threats that plagued the ordinary person on Rifts Earth.

This safety did not last, as the young boy found to his horror upon returning home one evening after a day spent exploring the nearby woods. On the whim of Lord Peran his family had been sacrificed in their own home in some diabolical ritual. Circles and pentagrams stained with rapidly congealing blood had been drawn on the floor of the living room and the mutilated bodies of his family staked in strange postures to some of these arcane symbols.

He managed to dig shallow graves to bury his family in. The young orphan managed to survive in the family home for a few days on his own. With food running low, he went out into the woods to gather fruit, but he was attacked by a pair of opportunistic vagabonds, fortunately for him a crimson garbed shaman was passing by, and saved him in an arrogant and glorious display of power.

Laran Gorge was engrossed by the power the shaman wielded, and how easily he destroyed his hapless attackers. Laran wanted that power so that no one would be able to harm him, and he felt with that power he could get justice from the wizard Lord Peran.

He was persuaded by the shaman to accompany him to a place of safety, where the shaman and his fellows would train him and give him power, so that he could seek vengeance against the wizard Lord Peran.

The journey took a long time and it was to a hidden location, known as the Copse in the Eastern Wilds of the North American continent. Near the end of the journey the shaman blindfolded Laran, performed mystic sorcery on him and he lost all sense of direction. Then they got into a slow flying vehicle and travelled for three days in various directions. Until the shaman took of the blindfold and told Laran they had reached their destination.

At the Copse they met some of the other shamans and their protégés. Laran was given a gold necklace to wear, after pledging to obey the shamans and the rules at the Copse.

The Copse had been carefully grown from towering carnivorous plants that bled when enraged, so that prying eyes could not see into it, and it hid nasty surprises for anyone foolish enough to enter or leave it without permission. The Copse hid a system of barrows, in which Laran and his fellow trainees lived with some of their teachers. The trainees at the Copse were of all ages, and had been there for varying lengths of time. Laran noticed that a hierarchy structure existed at the Copse amongst the shamans and the pupils. Only the most ruthless and determined would survive.

All too soon it became apparent to Laran Gorge the mistake he had made at agreeing to the shaman’s offer of power, it would have been a mercy to him if he had been killed alongside his family.

Laran learnt that the gold necklace was no loving gift, but an instrument of immense cruelty and terror, that the shamans used it to enforce their discipline with a gleeful zeal. It explained why none of the students ran away; most only needed one taste of it in action to never try escaping again. The students at the Copse would suffer any other punishment, rather than have the gold necklace around their neck activated.

The shaman would later be revealed, through conversation with other protégé’s to be a Blood Shaman. Laran was told by the shaman that a long time ago the Blood Shamans had ruled this part of the world and now they had returned to help the weak and reclaim what they had lost. They would grant their protection to those who asked for it, imbue power to those who wished to wield it and youngsters such as Laran would be trained and their bodies permeated with unimaginable power, so that they would be just one of the arms enforcing the Blood Shaman’s will.

Despite the unimaginable horrors he suffered and witnessed at the Copse, Laran survived and finished his training as a warrior and learnt to wield the awe inspiring power of the intimidating and indomitable images carven into his being in a ritual of excruciating pain.

Laran left the Copse to serve the Blood Shamans cause in the wider world. He did this willingly, as he came to be like his Blood Shaman teachers. They still did not trust him, for he still had the gold necklace around his neck, which seemed to enforce the will of the Blood Shamans irrespective of how far away he got from them.

He had entered the Copse as a lost and helpless young boy and left it as a young man and a mighty warrior. He served the Blood Shamans on numerous occasions, and on one of his assignments for them he discovered an underground lake, surrounded by a treasure trove of unimaginable wealth. This discovery happened in the area northeast of the Casper Preserve in the Black Hills area of Wyoming.

At this time he had become very much like his blood shaman teachers, selfish and craving power, trying to get ahead of them in the hierarchy. Laran decided to keep the treasure for himself, as his mission was only to locate a particular secret entrance to the underground cave systems of the Black Hills in Wyoming. It took him a while but he managed to remove the treasure hoard and secrete it away using his new found skills and powers that the Blood Shamans had instilled him with.

It was Laran who brought the news to Lazlo of an active Mindolar in the Federation of Magic who had established a significant power base. Lazlo has sent several voyager teams to the Magic Zone to investigate this rumour but so far there have been no concrete signs of this evil. They have uncovered tantalising and sometimes horrific hints of a terrible mastermind at work, but nothing tangible. Laran was on a mission for the Blood Shamans in the Magic Zone to spy on a powerful group of mages allied to the Federation of Magic. They were led by a great mage. Laran stumbled upon a secret conversion between the leader of this Federation of Magic and his supposed number two, who Laran claims was a Mindolar.

Laran was attracted to this conversation because he saw a massive flying vehicle appear out of nowhere, near the place he was hiding in. The vehicle was clearly advanced, as it was using some kind of cloaking/stealth technology to hide its enormous size while it flew.

Laran decided to investigate and upon moving closer, he heard the leader of the Federation of Magic talking to someone. Laran decided to listen into the conversion, but upon hearing the things he heard them discussing, he had to know who the mage was talking to and who owned such a fearsome war machine.

He only saw it for a moment, and at the time he wasn’t very experienced, so he could have misidentified the horror in front of him, as he was totally petrified at the sight of it, and all he could do when he got his wits together was to run away as fast as he could. Laran saw the mage bow to the Mindolar and as far as he was concerned, the mage was in the thrall of the Mindolar. The report about the Mindolar presence in the Federation of Magic wasn’t the only thing he discovered from this chance encounter. More interesting is what only he knows and what he shared with the powers that be in Lazlo.

Laran claims he overheard the Mindolar say that many decades ago it had thwarted a group of humans. These Republicans as he called them had tried to play his game, disrupting his plans. For that insolence he had so utterly derailed their strategy that their pawns would be hiding amongst the shadows of The Black Market for decades to come, while his pieces were now ruling the Coalition States.

It would be many years later that Laran would see a similar vehicle to the cloaked craft the Mindolar used, and that was when the Coalition States unveiled their new Firestorm Fortress, during the prelude to their onslaught on Tolkeen.

Seeing the Mindolar greatly effected Laran, he no longer wanted to be like the Blood Shamans and he no longer thirst for revenge against the mage who slew his family. At this revelation of Laran, the gold necklace around his neck fell away and he was free from the clutches of the Blood shamans.

Laran headed to Lazlo, where he tried to undo all the wrongs he had done while he was in the service of the Blood Shamans. He joined the Lazlo militia and serves it to this day and still actively performs the duties assigned to him, carrying out the Watch patrols in Lazlo city or guarding the Lazlo State borders from possible threats and investigating reports of undesirable activities within the Lazlo Nation.

Despite all his good works in Lazlo, he is shunned by the polite society of Lazlo, because of his association with undesirable elements, such as Shifters and his own unsavoury powers. This does not bother him for he is held in high regards amongst the inner circle of the powers that rule Lazlo, for his tireless fight against the powers of darkness and tyranny. He walks amid the shadows and corrupting elements in Lazlo, gathering intelligence to use against them and being an aegis against their unrelenting onslaught on the forces of righteousness.

Laran Gorge is keen to learn everything on the Mindolar and its group of mages and their plans. He fears the Mindolar and its rivals are pitting mortals against one another for their own amusements. He has recently heard rumours that a Mindolar has been sited near the city of Arzno, around the same time he has heard of a CS Firestorm Fortress being positioned in the surrounds of Arzno and has heard that many other CS units have been dispatched to that area.

To confront enemies like the Mindolar and its rivals, Laran is keen to know more about the human group known as the Republicans; he has heard rumours of such a group existing in the ruins of Washington.

Laran wants to learn more about the Blood Shamans and locate their bases, especially the Copse. His research on the Blood Shamans in Lazlo has revealed an interesting fact to him, that a group similar to the Blood Shamans was known as the Blood Druids in Europe’s past. He has heard that the Blood Druids are once again active in Europe and is keen to send voyager teams from Lazlo to discover more about them.

Laran Gorge has still got much of the treasure trove he recovered. He has used it sparingly and only to benefit others. He still has a sizeable fortune, hidden somewhere, which he uses to fund voyager and other research activities that interest him and safeguard the world. There were many magical artefacts in his treasure, but most of them are associated with evil, many of which he has destroyed.

The magical items he was unable to dispose of, he uses to lure out of the shadows other evil beings and power hungry mortals who crave such things. In the treasure trove there were many gold necklaces, arm and leg bands, very similar to the gold necklace the Blood Shamans made him wear at the Copse.

Laran Gorge is unaware but one of these gold necklaces that he has kept in his hidden treasure trove bestows on the wearer the power of the Greatest Bear Spirit. (GM Note: The wearer of this item gets the power of the Animal Totem: Bear at X2 power level of the normal bear totem.)

In the treasure trove Laran found numerous magical arrows, many of these have been identified in Lazlo to have been made from dragon and demon bones. Others have been created from demon blood and even dragon blood. There were even weapons made from dragon blood and demon blood. These blood weapons appear Middle Eastern in origin.

The treasure contained other magical items, as well as countless gems and precious stones; however the most common metal in the treasure was gold. The sheer amount of gold in the treasure trove is unbelievable.

Over the years Laran has realised the power he obtained from the Blood Shamans has come at a hefty price. Not only does he call the attention of diabolical forces every time he uses his powers but the use of his powers has mutated him to such an extent that many people mistake him for a D-bee. He realises that it is only because of his cautious use of those powers, and his refusal to yield to the dark forces he summons that has limited his corruption to mutation only; rather than him becoming a mirror image of all that he stands as a bulwark against.

Laran Gorge is an 11^th level Blood Reiver OCC.

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