| History: |
While some called it Crimson Island, and others, the The Painted City, Macabre Cadavryn called this hell of a world nothing more than home. This strip of sand no more than 25 miles long and 20 miles wide, was an escape. A place where the wicked thrive and the innocent suffer (if you can call any of the inhabitants innocent in the first place). This miserable spit of land is a place one can go to simply disappear.
When you set foot onto the Painted City’s shore, you let an overwhelming mix of excitement and doom wash over you and dilute your senses. Everyone knows your name because before a week has passed, you can’t even remember it yourself. Eventually you won’t have a name at all. The most disheartening of it all, is that you won’t even miss it.
This island’s decay and sorrow is wrapped up in a sugar-coated shell of tantalizing aesthetics and cheesy splendor. Commercial markets for rum and ale outnumber those of religious temples. The first two constructs of this God-forbidden “oasis” were a prison and a graveyard.
Macabre (“Mac” to her friends) was the product of corruption and decadence in its purest form. Her father, Sepul Cadavryn, was a merchant who “borrowed” practically everything he owned from his friends, family, and fellow merchants. Her mother was a vagabond who earned her keep sleeping around. She was, what this island called, a “Lovely Lady.” Mac’s mother gave birth to her in a dark alleyway between the saloon and a residence. But, on this island, in this depraved abyss, it was an anonymous street girl giving birth to an anonymous child, neither of whom anyone truly cared about.
This pathetic excuse for paradise did not have anything remotely related to an orphanage so the Lovely Ladies raised Macabre, and when she turned 11 in the summer of the new year, she was on her own. Forced into a life of deception and exploitation she became a skilled pick-pocket (bless her father for being such a good crook). By the age of 15 she was skilled in this craft and was even confident in her way with a sword. And now, at 17, she can man a ship with minimal effort and has an incredible sense of direction.
When Mac’s heart started yearning with everything it had to get out of this place and start life anew, she knew she would have to act, and act fast. With the help of her closest friends/co-workers she commandeered a docked ship and sailed off in a seemingly arbitrary direction.
She sailed and sailed and when she sighted land it was such an emotionally engulfing experience she almost fainted. This land was what she was looking for. A land of lush greens and blues. When she struck this land the sky was an inviting golden yellow and for the first time in her life… she knew: This is it. This is where I am meant to be, this is what I am meant to do.
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