Sir Jayna 'The Death Knight' den va Duchassne

Sir Jayna 'The Death-Knight' den va Duchassne

Jayna den va Duchassne was an Ippotoapokiakas (the [aversarian term for marchers born and raised in Kalathipsomi) born sometime in the 10th century to a minor noble family that briefly took part in the various civil wars over the co-governorship that consumed much of Kalathipsomi for the late 10th century between the newly rising Aversarian nobility and the old blood Marcher knightly houses that had been allowed to rule much of southern Kalathipsomi ever since the Aversarian conquests in the Marcher-Aversarian Wars.

Den va Duchassne's family by her birth had fallen to such poverty that she was born inside a barn in a peasant village as the family struggled to retake its ancestral castle, recently confiscated after the end of the power struggles led to many Ippotoapokiakan dynasties being stripped of their holdings as punishment. Den va Duchassne was by all accounts a troubled youth, struggling to come to terms with her poor station and the early death of both of her parents - her father assassinated by a political rival and her mother killing herself soon after.

Following the Lifepath, Jayna den va Duchassne traveled to Chevalie in order to ensure a Pathchoice with all possible Wayfathers, and chose the Way of Justice, swearing as part of her Pathvow to find perfection in the Path to one day find justice for her family and all other lost souls in her homeland. She would thereafter join the knightly order the Blessed Knights of the Holy Chalice, a secular Trustian order that largely made funding by assisting the Anti-Magic Orders at the Crucible or adventuring in the southern Lichdoms for relics and artifacts.

During her outings, Den va Duchassne was celebrated for her bravery and was knighted before reaching maturity. The escapade that earned her this glory was after she had secured an ancient Ojyczayns artifact in the ancient crypt undercrofts of the once great city of Deyjiclatczy, long since turned into the fortress of the 'Blood-Lich' Axios 'Purest of Blood and Bone' Axiosarex. Finding a glowing lantern seemingly able to draw forth fire and turn it into healing light, Den va Duchassne and her band of forty other knights and twice as many retainers (and five Anti-Magi journeying with them from the Order of the Blessings of Stilled Silver) were discovered and cornered by an army of undead protecting the ruin in the absence of Axiosarex (who was busy being killed in a duel with Jaylac Jaylaxian, his noted rival of some two hundred years (who would also die in the same engagement at roughly the same moment of Axiosarex, destroying the ruins of the roughly six millenia old city of Vegarlatcyxa and its many ruins by pulling them into the ocean)).

Den va Duchassne would be one of six survivors, and was the only one to survive and remain able of body to fight anew afterwards. Her five companions would survive with only two arms and four legs among them, and two of them would never again utter another word or move on their own accord, three taking their own lives. The adventurers had held off the undead in the crypts for over a month, starving and dying of dehydration and being forced to feast on the uncremated dead, in the pitch blackness of the crypts after all of their torches and lanterns were lost on the first day in an ambush. Den va Duchassne, then only sixteen years of age, would manage to break through a wall into an ancient cavern system in a move of desperation when she began swinging her war hammer upon a crumbling crypt, and would then carry her captain and lead the survivors out and over twenty leagues back to the Crucible, with the artifact in tow.

This was her moment of glory, but Jayna was horribly scarred from the event, both physically and mentally. The writings of her brother and sister knights remarked that Jayna was incredibly reserved afterwards, already dour but now positively melancholic. She would spend almost all time outside of quests and expeditions with the company resigned to her quarters, increasingly filling her time with old religious text and then arcana, claiming that it was to better understand how to fight the Magi by learning their methods.

Her comrades became increasingly worried as Jayna apparently became obsessed with finding a way to stop death itself. Jayla began to claim in what few writings remain and in the accounts of her comrades that death was the great evil, that nothing but pain was brought and that more and more seemed to die before their time at great cruelty every day, the world slowly becoming darker each time. The Liches and the undead were death made manifest, doing great evil as their minds had become corrupted with the reality of entropy.

Eventually, her order moved to arrest her after a compatriot informed their chaptermaster of something told to him months ago by Jayla in private - that she had been born with some skill in magic as a child, but since she had never been trained, she had never used her abilities on anything more than simple accident. Suddenly her possession of great amounts of arcana went from a quirk to a great danger, and knights of her Order rushed into her quarters to find them empty and Jayna escaped in the night. Among her possessions, it was discovered that she had pieced together the Thirteen Abyssal Steps. The last report of Jayna was in northern Kalthipsomi along the coast just outside the Mayikprolollan sto Spathas, where a mysterious knight was said to have entered village of Ecquinod which had long been terrorized by the brigands of the Laughing Tree Band. Jayla would challenge twelve bandits coming to collect toll - including the bands leader, famous Legion deserter Legatos Descan Ionix, and kill all of them in a desperate struggle nearly ending with her own death. The villagers were first filled with cheer, but were horrified to see how brutally she dealt with the bandits, rending them limb from limb in battle and seemingly often striking just to do no more than cause great pain for her enemies. Ionix himself was only killed after six minutes of brutalization by Jayna, well after he had been de-handed and removed from the battle. The villagers began to name her the 'Deathrender', a title which would soon become associated with her in nearly all mentions.

Jayna then bought a ship from the villagers, and when asked what her goals were as she treated her wounds, she claimed that she had taken a quest to defeat death itself. Together with all other testimony (gathered once her Order followed her trail to the village), it had become clear how Jayna's madness had manifested. She wished to become a Lich to learn how to defeat death, and to have enough time and power in order to one day learn a ritual to end the cycle of life and death.

Sadly, by the time her Order finally found her ship, it was too late. Her boat was not broken on the rocks of the Isles or sunken, but was found returned to Ecquinod some months after the search began, the villagers claiming it had appeared at their dock in the middle of the night.

All further information about Jayna is impossible to truly know, as she wrote no known record in the following years. Some villagers in northern Chevalie reported oddly gentle Lich raids, focused more on extracting tribute in the form of magical ingredients, goods, and livestock, rather than taking slaves or causing desolation. The villagers spoke of a Lich that said little, and seemed solemn, reserved, and self concious of their own visage, who named themselves Dexas 'Deathrender' Dexasidyn. Reports over the next century would see Dexas becoming seemingly less kind with time, increasingly beginning more damaging raids and attacks, and after some hundred years of activity begin taking slaves and killing any who resisted her.

While Dexas's original identity was long unknown, scholars in the Blessed Knights of the Holy Chalice soon investigated the matter and realized that a close companion of long-lost Jayna who was among those they had been forced to cannibalize in the crypts so long ago was named Desax Xedadiysn, by most accounts her closest companion and a fellow Marcher of Kalathipsomian descent. With the title Deathrender, and the name being a clear anagram, the Order was shook at the realization that the dreaded Deathrender and Sir Den va Duchassne were one and the same. This brought great controversy as news soon spread across Chevalie, and the Order soon faced the realization that they were likely to be disbanded by force for their shame, and at best would slowly die out from any lack of willing members or patrons. So the Order dedicated itself to a single goal - hunting down and killing Dexas 'Deathrender'.

The Order, disgraced and dwindling in power, would run itself nearly to death attempting to track and corner Dexas. They would manage to halt several border raids, but nonetheless failed to find the stronghold of the Lich, especially after nearly two thirds of the Order were killed in an ambush when they attempted to investigate if she had made her home in Deyjiclatczy. With less than afifty brothers and sisters under arms of the original three hundred when Dexas had first joined, a final effort was made, the entire Company arming themselves and traveling to the Lichdoms for a final attempt to slay the Lich in order to save the honor of their Order.

Nearly all would be killed, but six members would survive the retreat south to warn Chevalie that Jayna had amassed a great host, and was marching to invade the south. The band had finally found her, but too late, and had walked straight into an army unseen in size since the invasion of Silas Stavro three centuries prior. The warning was too late, but was enough to save potentially thousands of lives, and the recent reunification of Chevalie by the Den va Seignon family meant that the armies of the Marches were able to gather in time to meet the threat. The following series of battles across the north would be hectic and great, but Dexas was fought to a standstill outside the Conclave of Raocourt, and was forced to divert her attention for other a month to answering challenges from rebellious Liches Iurdoc Iurdian, Mathex 'Hate-Heart' Duricdeny, and Jorvik the Black. She would finally regain control of her horde but would find herself attacked by a united force of the Anti-Magic Orders and the royal army of the High Kingdom.

During the famous Battle of the Passes, she would finally be separated from her forces and slain by the legendary knight Maria den va Theydia, her equally legendary blade being plunged deep into Jayna's 'eye'. Maria and survivors from her party would claim that Dexas had spoken great amounts during the battle, though broke the usual trend of statements of unfounded superiority turning to curses and panicked threats as things became more desperate that was customary for most Liches. Instead, Jayna, clearly having long lost her mind during her 'life' as a Lich, spoke as if she did not even wish to launch the great invasion she had. Sometimes in panic, sometimes in depression, the Lich spoke of how death had defeated her, that there was no true way to end it, and that the only way to spare all souls from the 'horrifying realm of shadow and soul that I saw as I died' would be slaying all living souls and bounding them back to their skeletons after.

The last words of Dexas 'Deathrender' were written as "Damn you! So much left to do... you don't know... don't you know!? There is nothing after! Nothing! I give you mercy, take it!", but these were not the last of Jayna den va Duchassne. Reports vary and have long been distorted by legend, but Maria herself would claim to have exchanged final words with the Lich just before plunging the blade into her skull. Jayna den va Duchassne was said to have returned for moments, a brief period of lucidity from her madness, and seemed to attempt to cry before realizing her body no longer allowed her to. Her last words were "I am scared, so scared. Please don't send me there," before her death.

The Blessed Knights of the Holy Chalice would have three survivors at the end of the war, and would recruit no further members despite most agreeing they had done more than enough to restore their honor. The three knights, Iln of Mecknarnae (who was technically the Order's quartermaster and never knighted), Sir Maverk den va Martin, and Sir Aela 'Dragonmane' Achereaux, would have Jayna's name stricken from the orders record and maintain the small keep that the Knights once called home until their deaths, where it would then be donated to the neighboring Order of the Blessings of Stilled Silver. The den va Duchassne's meanwhile faired worse, their fortunes only improving for a brief period under Aautokratir Aeschraes during the Imperial Civil War, but the two remaining heirs of the dynasty being killed in Frodbrokna at its conclusion, and the last three members of the dynasty being assassinated at the order of Demetros Detheniax in the Kalathipsomian power struggles soon after. While some scholars have found poetic tale to be weaved from Jayna's story, for the most part she is considered a disgrace to Chevalie and the Marchers of Kalathipsomi both, and is rarely mentioned in polite conversation.