Northstrider

Northstrider's History

Northstrider is the Monarch of unbound sacred artists, dedicated to various fields of research and the extermination of dragons.

He is also the creator of the pocket world Ghostwater, which was his attempt to enhance his mind by building a Presence. It failed, but Wei Shi Lindon succeeded in constructing Dross, a sentient construct, just before Ghostwater's destruction.

Northstrider was orphaned at a young age, and thanks to the dormant bloodlines of his parents, inherited a supreme ability to control blood madra. He and 99 other orphans were gathered together by an unnamed Warlord somewhere in the Trackless Sea, in a "Pod," and trained as a soldier to fight against his enemies.

Over the course of this training, Northstrider and his Pod hunted Water Drakes, lesser cousins of dragons, which also made up their entire diet. Thanks to this diet and his natural talent with blood madra, Nothstrider's power increased at a frightening pace. He would go hunting for days at a time, constantly advancing northwards, which was the origin of his name.

During those years Northstrider found the depths of the oceans to be both a fertile hunting ground and a treasure trove of natural treasures and many other things. It was in those depths that he found certain bindings (presumably Hunger Bindings) which he combined with his Blood madra, thus created the Path of the Hungry Deep.

In a memory stolen by Dross he could be seen as a Sage after being lured in by a Herald Black Dragon. By this point he had already developed a strong enmity to all Dragons, and after a ferocious battle he manage to defeat the Herald, though he was grievously injured as a result. This would normally not have been a problem for Northstrider, as thanks to his talent in blood madra he could easily heal those wounds, but he was surrounded by enemies and thus he determined that his only chance to survive was to ascend as a Monarch, despite the risks this entails.

At some point after he became a Monarch, the Abidan Court extended an invitation to Northstrider to ascend to their ranks but he declined for fear of being oppressed for a lack of power.

Not wanting the help of the Abidan to become stronger, he thought about what differentiated him from the Abidan and determined that it was their Presence (mind spirits that helped them function much faster and more efficiently) that made them different, leading to the creation of the pocket realm known as Ghostwater in which he tried to create such a presence without success.

During the 50 years after abandoning the facility, he continued hunting dragons and was eventually presumed dead after a fight with a Dreadgod, the Weeping Dragon.

Even though Ghostwater was a failure he did not give up and continued his research. Though there are no details as to what exactly he did, the result was a shiny black sphere with many complex scripts inside it. He calls this the Oracle Codex. After the attack of the Bleeding Phoenix on the Blackflame Empire, the anchor that kept the pocketworld stable was damaged and started to crumble. Shortly before it succumbed to the spatial instability caused by the continued use of gate keys, Northstrider decided to go back and salvage what he could. He appeared in Ghostwater only seconds before it crumbled but he used the Authority granted by his rank as a Monarch to instantly stabilize the pocket realm. He found Akura Harmony after he was defeated by Wei Shi Lindon and the exit portal was destroyed by Orthos, only seconds away from being torn apart by Spatial Rifts but he ignored his pleas for rescue, and after absorbing the Oracle Tree into his new construct he left and released his hold on the pocket world after which it immediately crumbled.

He confronted Lindon multiple times, at first to experiment with Dross, then to advise him in his use of Hunger madra, then finally as an enemy when Lindon wanted to force the Monarchs to ascend.