Freshly able to return to service, Sean Enkelit finds himself in a very odd situation. He and his best friend Undine have been assigned to shepherd a Child of Eldath for an unknown period of time. In that time, he and Undine discovered a resurgance in the strength of the Sahuagin that had horribly scarred the pair only four years ago on the coast of Aylares.
With odd company and strange events unfolding all around them, he sometimes looks at the stars and wonders if Helm even cares about the struggles of mortals. If any of the gods do, for that matter, with how much suffering he sees. But then he steels himself, for The Watcher must be fighting unimaginable battles all for the sake of protecting mortals. That The Watcher's eye ever falls upon them to guide and protect them is a blessing, after all... Who would he be to ask for more?
Sean had a barebones upbringing. His family couldn't afford to educate him in any form, leaving him illiterate and quite unknowledgable about anything other than manual labor. His father, the only parent he ever knew, worked the docks by moving cargo to and from ships for copper. Sean soon joined him, much too soon to be a working boy yet eager to have enough coin to eat a proper meal. He familiarized himself with the anatomy of ships, and generally found the work exhausting yet fulfilling enough. Furthermore, when his father found better work as a sailor than mere muscle for the docks, the two were often separated but shared much more rich time together with some real food in their bellies and fascinating tales of Itrestead's shores. Sean was, for the most part, as happy as he could be with his circumstances.
When Sean was only 10, he found himself the guardian of a brand new baby sister, Adelphi - a perfect little baby as far as he was concerned. His father, however, now had to double-up work to pay for two children. Life as an uneducated sailor's son with a baby sister to feed was far from simple for Sean. To care for his sister he'd work himself day and night, making sure she had warmth and food even if he couldn't eat on their budget. He would wait for weeks at a time for his father to return and help them and was always relieved when their dad returned with food, clothes, and coin. But inevitably, as nothing is ever simple for Sean, there came a day when their father did not return from the sea, leaving the two children alone. Sean never learned exactly what happened to the poor old man, only receiving a pitying stare and a small sack of silver pieces from the captain of his final voyage.
Sean worked as hard as he could, but for years the tiny family of two didn't get anywhere. Adelphi was getting old enough she'd soon need an education, friends, proper nutrition - he was out of options and couldn't provide any of that alone. With nowhere else to turn, at 15 years of age Sean eventually submitted himself to the church of Helm with the promise from them that Adelphi would be fed and housed so long as he served dutifully. He never cared much for authority and trusting the adults in his life, which caused immediate friction between himself and Watcher Rowe who was assigned to train him. However, his affinity for channeling divine magic couldn't be dismissed. Some speculate his affinity for The Watcher's divine will stems from spending his whole life trying to safeguard Adelphi.
Training was tough. He learned to move in armor, wield weapons, prepare spells, and all the while having the scripture of Helm hammered into his head. Sean never really cared about religion, and listening to all that crap about the gods always made his nose wrinkle - what had the gods ever done for him and Adelphi when they were starving, freezing, sick? But as far as gods go, he found Helm the most agreeable. Watcher Rowe was hard on him, harder than she was on the other trainees. He always figured she resented his rebellious nature against her authority, in turn "embarrassing" her in front of superior officers. He resented her in kind for the hostility she always showed him, unwilling to back down from her intimidation tactics that the other priests- and paladins-to-be caved in to so readily. He couldn't let Adelphi see him as some weak, pathetic boot-licker, she had to know he was tough as nails and able to keep her safe and sound no matter what.
Not that training was all bad... well, the training sucked, but his peers were pretty alright. Many of them were formerly impovrished or orphaned, one list of tragic backstories after the other. However, due to his constant friction with Watcher Rowe, he was mostly avoided by the other trainees. Except for, interestingly, the teacher's pet of the group. Undine approached Sean willingly and curiously, praising his affinity for divine magick while recognizing his potential and skill openly even when Watcher Rowe tried to downplay it time and again. He grew fond of them readily at that, appreciating their courage to go against the grain alongside him (even if he did still find their sucking up to Watcher Rowe distasteful). They patched his training-bruises and he snuck them sweets when he could.
Adelphi was learning and growing up fast, too. Before Sean even realized it, she'd grown from a mere toddler into a strong-willed kid. As she grew, everyone couldn't help but notice the divine touch to her, the way her empty silver eyes glowed with a soft warm light and how her coppery hair shone in the sunlight like a halo. Despite barely even reaching the double-digit age milestone, Adelphi was able to heal wounds with a mere touch without invoking hymns or arcane scripts and light bloomed where she walked. There was no room for doubt that this child was divine-touched, but anyone with eyes could see that it was not Helm that favored her, but the much-detested Morninglord. Though the clergy wished to send her to Relling to be guided by the Lathanderian church there, both siblings were extremely hostile to the suggestion of being separated.
Sean was 20, teetering on the edge of priesthood when those vile things stormed the shores of Aylares. The Sahuagin appeared in the night, slithering up the banks of the slumbering city and into the ships perched at the docks. Their attack was sudden, unprescedented in scale and efficiency. The city guard scrambled to keep the creatures restricted to the docks and the slums to save the wealthy merchants and nobles of the upper city, leaving so many poor and homeless vulnerable. The Helmites, stalwart guardians, made no such discrimination.
Seeing the streets of his youth overrun with blood and gore would ordinarily shake a poor young man's resolve, but Sean's courage only dug its heels in deeper at the sight. The Helmites of Aylares moved in, weapons drawn and crying prayers to the divine guardian to save as many as possible from certain death at the end of spears and claws and rows of jagged teeth. What was all that training for, if not this moment right here and now?
His fellow Helmites say that night, Sean fought like a man possessed. His blade struck down the brutes, his shield protected the innocent, words of healing fell from his lips in the same breath that bolts of divine wrath sprung from his fingertips. Many Helmites fell, but many more survived due to his dogged loyalty to his own. Nothing would stop him, until in the process of bullying a Sahuagin off an injured girl, he let his guard down for just a second - and the Sahuagin had grabbed his shield arm. It started dragging him closer, the towering beast hooking vicious talons into his chainmail that pierced into his guts. He knew full well he didn't stand a chance if it grappled him, and unable to break away, did the only thing he could thing of to escape a gruesome death: with a heavy swing of his sword-arm, he severed three limbs. Two of the Sahuagin's... and his own, at the elbow, the fallen limb still gripping his shield. The Sahuagin fled, quickly offed by Undine - reliable Undine. They asked him to go back with the injured, to save himself from this bloodbath. He was unwilling to leave them.
The fight dragged on, Sean and Undine sparing as many lives as they could from the carnage. As the battle started to wind down, the injured Sahuagin falling back and so few of them left in fighting shape, things almost looked to be over. But in his exhaustion, his single-minded focus on saving and surviving, Sean didn't see the Baron rise from the deep - didn't see how its four sets of claws flexed and gripped the viciously-shaped trident it wielded. He pushed his fellow Helmites to safety without even realizing the great beast was upon him, he didn't even have time to realize its teeth sinking into his chainmail and crushing the bones of his arm. His head was swimming with a mixture of panic and pain by the time he tried to wrench himself free of its grip, dropping his sword as the Baron tore his comparatively fragile limb from its socket with a roar, dropping his now entirely armless body to the ground. He watched the severed limb land beside his face, bloodied gauntlet still seeming to stretch for the fallen sword he would never reach. He was convinced, for a moment, he'd most certainly die.
Undine, however, had other plans. While the more capable Watchers turned their attention to eliminating the Baron, a now half-blinded Undine charged into the mix. Stupid, brilliant, reliable Undine. They hoisted him upon their own shoulders, armor and all, to escape this gods-forsaken mess together. Always together. Sean knew one thing for damn sure: whether or not the gods ever cared about any of them, Undine would have his back, always. And they most certainly did, making sure Sean was tended to and cared for when they returned. The clerics were able to stabilize him despite the physical trauma he suffered, though he was one of their more critical patients for a long while.
Sean didn't handle the loss well. He became closed-off, unresponsive, nonverbal. He barely reacted to anything or anyone, except for Adelphi and Undine, and even then he just seemed pained. Guilt for not being able to do more, for not being able to take care of them like he used to, twisted his mind and his guts into knots. He considered himself a failure and a burden. Adelphi was suddenly became distant, barely coming to see him until eventually he was told she'd decided to live with the Lathanderites after all. She didn't even come to say goodbye to him.
Life carried on, despite how broken Sean felt. Undine remained at his side, even as he fell to his lowest point yet in the absence of Adelphi. His bravery in the battle of Aylares had gathered the respect of his peers, who pushed back against Watcher Rowe's wishes to send Sean away now that he couldn't serve the way he used to. Undine in particular insisted on the church handling his recovery, even as Sean had altogether given up on himself. He'd lost everything, hadn't he? What could possibly be done?
He was taken by surprise when a Gondian Forge-Priestess was brought to his bedside by the other trainees. As a team, they'd scraped together the resources to fund the construction of artificial limbs for Sean. The forge-priestess confirmed it'd be tough work, and it'd likely cause more permanent changes to his body to support the limbs, but she could craft him new arms. Hands of metal that would not feel the same as his original set, but that would be sturdy enough to handle even a giant's club without denting. He'd never accepted an offer so quickly in his life. While no, Sean couldn't get his arms back, he could kick off from here and carve out a new path with new (and maybe clumsy, at first) hands.
Undine helped him adjust. They stuck by him during fittings and tests, helped him get a feel for the weight of his arms, helped him get back into being himself. They wrote letters to Adelphi when Sean couldn't, and eventually helped him pen his own letters in his own hand for the first time in ages. It took years to retrain himself to use his new hands dextrously, but hard work was hardly new to Sean, and the pure happiness of being able to write a letter to his beloved sister in his own writing was more than enough to move him to tears. Frankly, he was etstatic merely to be alive and to regain any of his lost mobility. Not everyone was afforded such a luxury, such as Undine's permanent partial blindness, and that fact only made him more thankful for his own circumstances. Sean started smiling more, joking more, returning somwhat to his old self - though he now carried himself less like a headstrong teenager and more like a jovial, free-spirited man. Elevating to full priesthood also freed him from Watcher Rowe's direct authority, which brought its own boons now that she didn't breathe down his neck all hours of the day.
Despite everything he had survived, he felt truly alive for maybe the first time. There was no going back, only forward.
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