Since then, ol' Eustace has gotten remade as a Blaster and now back to a Defender again:
It would've been about 1830 or so, near Hell's Canyon in what would decades later come to be Idaho. That's where I lived with my wife, and after a short while our daughter. Those were different times; happier some would say, though I know now that such happiness is a fleeting illusion.
I wasn't a warrior then. Sure, I could hunt and fish, but that was simple survival. I was the provider for my family and I did what I had to. But hunger and cold, while insidious enemies in their own right, don't require the well-honed skills of a warrior to combat. We simply lived and loved. It was almost idyllic and therefore, as I should've known were I less naive, couldn't last for long.
They came in the night. Strange men in archaic metal armor that I later came to know were the acoutrements of Spanish conquistadors. They kept asking about the Seven Devils, but I didn't know what they were talking about. As I watched they tortured my wife and daughter to death; their screams still occasionally haunt my dreams though I have sadly forgotten their faces. Their leader, a man in golden armor with a lion emblazoned on the breastplate, finally decided I was useless to them and thrust his poniard right through where my heart should have been. They left me for dead and moved on.
---
I'm not sure how long it was afore ol' Three Arrows found me. Ol' Three Arrows? He was a half-injun mountain man who lived in the mountains a few miles to the east. He occasionally stopped by to trade. Said he got his name when he killed a grizzly bear with three arrows in one shot.
When I woke up he was packing some strange-smelling leaves into the hole in my chest. Told me I'd be dead right now if I weren't backwards. I'm what the indians called a Reflection Man. These days doctors refer to it as "Dextrocardia with Situs Inversus" but whatever you call it, it just means my insides are reversed.
A month later I was feeling better, and was raring to take off after the man in the golden armor. But ol' Three Arrows told me I couldn't go until I paid him back for saving my life. When I tried to leave anyway, he put me flat on my back before I knew it. I was forced to stay there and work for him. I was young and angry, and eventually grew to hate the man who I then saw as my captor.
It wasn't until many years later that I realized ol' Three Arrows was doing me a favour. Working for him I learned to track and shoot better than before; the hard labor and mountain air made me tougher than I had ever been. In short, ol' Three Arrows was making a warrior out of me. I wish I had realized it back then, as I would've thanked him rather than cursed his name when he finally released me from my debt a year later.
---
The trail had long since grown cold, of course. But I had learned some patience as a skilled hunter. I headed to California, assuming that my Spanish enemies had come from that direction. But none could tell me of this man in golden armor. It was then that I took up bounty hunting. It was a profession in which I could hone my skills even further. And the criminal world is full of information to be beaten free from the dregs of society.
Plying my trade and heading east towards Mexico, I did a lot of beating. It wasn't til I got to Mexico that I heard rumours of a figure referred to as the Golden Lion. He was said to be a Spanish general who had stuck around after the main forces of Spain had withdrawn from the states. He was a shadow figure given responsibility for any number of deeds across America and Mexico.
As exciting as this information seemed at first, I soon found that tracking a myth is a nearly impossible task. It would be decades before I got a solid lead on this Golden Lion, and ironically it would be long after I had given up hope of finding him.
---
Yup. That's right. Forty years I spent searching for the Golden Lion. Over that time I built up quite a reputation as a bounty hunter, too. I never did cotton to guns, even after Sam Colt made the revolver the most popular weapon in America. I stuck to my bow - a hunter's weapon. And besides, you couldn't very well attach a net or rope to a bullet.
Over time I began to enjoy the work more while the idea of finding the Golden Lion and getting my revenge fell more and more to the wayside. Until one day I found I was getting old. My hair was silvered, my reflexes weren't what they used to be, and the world I was used to was movin' on. I retired. I gave up. I settled down and bought a saloon. I figured there wasn't much time or meaning left for me in this life.
Then, one day, a man in battered archaic metal armor of Spanish design walked into my bar. This stirred some uncomfortable memories in me. When he walked up to me I was certain I was gonna have to kill him, but when he spoke I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice: here was a good and noble man. He introduced himself as a knigt errant and said he had heard much of me. He said he knew where I could find the Golden Lion and that he needed my help to take him down.
His name was Alonso Quijano III, head of a knightly order known as La Mancha.
---
Though you might be more familiar with his romanticized title, Don Quijote de la Mancha.
We sat down and had us a little palaver, he and I. He told me about a Spanish conquistador named Ponce de Leon. The Leon family were occultists who had collected many artifacts over several generations, and amassed much wealth and power in Spain. The Sacred Order of La Mancha had been watching the Leon family for quite some time, occasionally thwarting some of their more sinister plans. In retaliation, the Leon family hired a writer to satirize the head of the order, making him out to be a senile buffoon with an outmoded sense of chivalry. After that the order started to dwindle.
The last son of the Leon family, Ponce de Leon, had come to America in the early 16th century searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth. A few years later he officially died. Not long after that, a mysterious shadow figure known only as The Golden Lion popped up. Alonso told me that he had determined the Golden Lion to be Ponce de Leon.
---
Let me tell ya, that got my attention. I told Alonso he was crazy. If Ponce de Leon were the Golden Lion he'd be over 300 years old.
Of course, you've probably already put two and two together. I was old, not as sharp as I used to be, more than a bit apathetic, and admittedly slightly drunk.
Alonso patiently explained that he had tracked the Golden Lion to his lair - a golden fortress built on the legendary Fountain of Youth. He believed that the Golden Lion had used the fountain to gain immortality, and was planning to summon something fell and evil using various artifacts he had acquired. It appeared that de Leon was going to sacrafice seven sealed devils he had located (at this, my heart skipped a beat) to summon some dark god from ages past.
Maybe it was the whiskey in me, but I decided I'd get my gear and follow this crazy knight into the wilds of Florida to find this supposed fortress and take down the Golden Lion once and for all.
---
Life on the trail is dull. There's no need for me to go into how many days it took us to get where we was going, or how often we passed our water on the way, so I'll just cut to the chase.
We finally made it to the so-called "Golden Fortress" - it was really nothin' more than a ramshackle wooden fort somewhere in what is now the Everglades. The place was quiet, so we just strolled on in through the front gate. Inside was a fountain that really was made of gold, and within it the foulest water I've ever seen. A few yards away was the Golden Lion, chanting something over a roaring fire, his armour a bit more battered since last we met those many years ago.
We had the drop on him. Quietly I drew my bow, taking aim at the back of my enemy's head...
---
...but I didn't account for the chivalrous notions of the nutty knight I was travelling with. Before I could get the shot off, he announced our presence in a bold and quite annoying manner. It's probably just as well. I'd never been one to shoot a man in the back afore, but I was old, bitter, and tired of it all.
Ponce was a younger man than either me or the knight, and wicked fast with his rapier and poniard. If not for the valiant efforts of Don Alfonso, who protected me from many a sword wound with his own melee skills, I'd've been skewered for sure.
The fight went on for what seemed like hours but was more likely minutes. I was nicked up, the knight was bleeding unhealthily, and to make matters worse the roaring fire had gotten scattered in the fray setting the whole place afire. The Golden Lion was looking rather like a Crimson Porcupine what with the blood and arrows sticking out of him.
We clashed again and the Knight went down at the base of the fountain which was now starting to melt while the foul waters within boiled filling the area with a foetid steam.
I remember shouting, "Why won't you die?!"
The smug [censored] laughed at me. He said something arrogant like: "Fools! The water of the fountain has made me immortal."
O' course, you probably already figured out the immortality bit earlier when Don Alfonso mentioned the fountain and Ponce in the bar. You must think I was pretty thick not to've figured it out myself by then.
---
Truth be told, I had figured it out. I was just stalling a moment while the Knight drug himself behind ol' Pompous Ponce.
I let out a roar and drew a special weighted arrow I'd come up with, firing it into Ponce's chest and forcing him to stumble backward, stunned. I fired a second time, and he staggered back again bumping into the knight and almost tripping into the fountain which was now a mass of molten gold and seething water. I hafta admit that I gain some pleasure from the sick look of realization that crossed his face at that moment, as I drew the third weighted arrow and loosed it upon him as he stood unbalanced. The arrow hit his chest so hard that the iron weight shattered on his armour. The piteous high-pitched screams as he sank into the boiling water and hot liquid gold were short-lived.
Choking on the foetid steam I ran over to the knight. He was in bad condition and I knew he wasn't gonna make it, but I started to drag him out of the "Golden Fortress" which was bound to collapse on our heads at any moment. As I knelt to pick him up, he grabbed my arm. In a gasping voice he said to me, "Tell me, Sancho, did we win?"
"Aye, Sir Knight," I said glancing worriedly at the fountain, "we won."
And with that he sighed his spirit to its reward. I shed a tear for him over a bottle of whiskey later, but right then I had to concentrate on getting the hell outta Dodge. By then the place was coming down around my ears. There must've been some sort of angel watching over me, but I made it out somehow. As I leapt through the gates of the fortress to freedom, it collapsed in on itself and I watched exhausted as the flaming wreckage sank into the marsh.
---
I made my way back to civilization, a peaceful sense of closure having settled over my life. I expected to maybe live a few more years and then pass on like everyone else.
But I found I had a renewed sense of vigor. The passage of a few years left me feeling restless and in better physical shape than I'd been for awhile. So I took to bounty hunting again, fully expecting that my age would catch up with me on the trail and I'd die a violent death, but at least I'd be doing something I enjoyed.
When I reached my 90s and that renewed sense of vigor still hadn't gone away I began to sense that something wasn't right. Goin' over things in my head, I came to the conclusion that breathing in the vapours of the Fountain of Youth had, for better or worse, given me extreme longevity. And so, here I am in Paragon City, still plying my trade. Times have changed a bit, but I've adapted. Still can't part with my bow, though some say it's an archaic weapon. I have made extensive modifications over the years, however.
And I recently invested in a device called a Quantum Ripper that allows me to bend the laws of three-dimensional space - it sure beats walkin'.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be -- The Fox and the Hound
I originally posted this awhile back over at the original Knights of Paragon's forums.
Since then, ol' Eustace has gotten remade as a Blaster and now back to a Defender again:
It would've been about 1830 or so, near Hell's Canyon in what would decades later come to be Idaho. That's where I lived with my wife, and after a short while our daughter. Those were different times; happier some would say, though I know now that such happiness is a fleeting illusion.
I wasn't a warrior then. Sure, I could hunt and fish, but that was simple survival. I was the provider for my family and I did what I had to. But hunger and cold, while insidious enemies in their own right, don't require the well-honed skills of a warrior to combat. We simply lived and loved. It was almost idyllic and therefore, as I should've known were I less naive, couldn't last for long.
They came in the night. Strange men in archaic metal armor that I later came to know were the acoutrements of Spanish conquistadors. They kept asking about the Seven Devils, but I didn't know what they were talking about. As I watched they tortured my wife and daughter to death; their screams still occasionally haunt my dreams though I have sadly forgotten their faces. Their leader, a man in golden armor with a lion emblazoned on the breastplate, finally decided I was useless to them and thrust his poniard right through where my heart should have been. They left me for dead and moved on.
---
I'm not sure how long it was afore ol' Three Arrows found me. Ol' Three Arrows? He was a half-injun mountain man who lived in the mountains a few miles to the east. He occasionally stopped by to trade. Said he got his name when he killed a grizzly bear with three arrows in one shot.
When I woke up he was packing some strange-smelling leaves into the hole in my chest. Told me I'd be dead right now if I weren't backwards. I'm what the indians called a Reflection Man. These days doctors refer to it as "Dextrocardia with Situs Inversus" but whatever you call it, it just means my insides are reversed.
A month later I was feeling better, and was raring to take off after the man in the golden armor. But ol' Three Arrows told me I couldn't go until I paid him back for saving my life. When I tried to leave anyway, he put me flat on my back before I knew it. I was forced to stay there and work for him. I was young and angry, and eventually grew to hate the man who I then saw as my captor.
It wasn't until many years later that I realized ol' Three Arrows was doing me a favour. Working for him I learned to track and shoot better than before; the hard labor and mountain air made me tougher than I had ever been. In short, ol' Three Arrows was making a warrior out of me. I wish I had realized it back then, as I would've thanked him rather than cursed his name when he finally released me from my debt a year later.
---
The trail had long since grown cold, of course. But I had learned some patience as a skilled hunter. I headed to California, assuming that my Spanish enemies had come from that direction. But none could tell me of this man in golden armor. It was then that I took up bounty hunting. It was a profession in which I could hone my skills even further. And the criminal world is full of information to be beaten free from the dregs of society.
Plying my trade and heading east towards Mexico, I did a lot of beating. It wasn't til I got to Mexico that I heard rumours of a figure referred to as the Golden Lion. He was said to be a Spanish general who had stuck around after the main forces of Spain had withdrawn from the states. He was a shadow figure given responsibility for any number of deeds across America and Mexico.
As exciting as this information seemed at first, I soon found that tracking a myth is a nearly impossible task. It would be decades before I got a solid lead on this Golden Lion, and ironically it would be long after I had given up hope of finding him.
---
Yup. That's right. Forty years I spent searching for the Golden Lion. Over that time I built up quite a reputation as a bounty hunter, too. I never did cotton to guns, even after Sam Colt made the revolver the most popular weapon in America. I stuck to my bow - a hunter's weapon. And besides, you couldn't very well attach a net or rope to a bullet.
Over time I began to enjoy the work more while the idea of finding the Golden Lion and getting my revenge fell more and more to the wayside. Until one day I found I was getting old. My hair was silvered, my reflexes weren't what they used to be, and the world I was used to was movin' on. I retired. I gave up. I settled down and bought a saloon. I figured there wasn't much time or meaning left for me in this life.
Then, one day, a man in battered archaic metal armor of Spanish design walked into my bar. This stirred some uncomfortable memories in me. When he walked up to me I was certain I was gonna have to kill him, but when he spoke I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice: here was a good and noble man. He introduced himself as a knigt errant and said he had heard much of me. He said he knew where I could find the Golden Lion and that he needed my help to take him down.
His name was Alonso Quijano III, head of a knightly order known as La Mancha.
---
Though you might be more familiar with his romanticized title, Don Quijote de la Mancha.
We sat down and had us a little palaver, he and I. He told me about a Spanish conquistador named Ponce de Leon. The Leon family were occultists who had collected many artifacts over several generations, and amassed much wealth and power in Spain. The Sacred Order of La Mancha had been watching the Leon family for quite some time, occasionally thwarting some of their more sinister plans. In retaliation, the Leon family hired a writer to satirize the head of the order, making him out to be a senile buffoon with an outmoded sense of chivalry. After that the order started to dwindle.
The last son of the Leon family, Ponce de Leon, had come to America in the early 16th century searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth. A few years later he officially died. Not long after that, a mysterious shadow figure known only as The Golden Lion popped up. Alonso told me that he had determined the Golden Lion to be Ponce de Leon.
---
Let me tell ya, that got my attention. I told Alonso he was crazy. If Ponce de Leon were the Golden Lion he'd be over 300 years old.
Of course, you've probably already put two and two together. I was old, not as sharp as I used to be, more than a bit apathetic, and admittedly slightly drunk.
Alonso patiently explained that he had tracked the Golden Lion to his lair - a golden fortress built on the legendary Fountain of Youth. He believed that the Golden Lion had used the fountain to gain immortality, and was planning to summon something fell and evil using various artifacts he had acquired. It appeared that de Leon was going to sacrafice seven sealed devils he had located (at this, my heart skipped a beat) to summon some dark god from ages past.
Maybe it was the whiskey in me, but I decided I'd get my gear and follow this crazy knight into the wilds of Florida to find this supposed fortress and take down the Golden Lion once and for all.
---
Life on the trail is dull. There's no need for me to go into how many days it took us to get where we was going, or how often we passed our water on the way, so I'll just cut to the chase.
We finally made it to the so-called "Golden Fortress" - it was really nothin' more than a ramshackle wooden fort somewhere in what is now the Everglades. The place was quiet, so we just strolled on in through the front gate. Inside was a fountain that really was made of gold, and within it the foulest water I've ever seen. A few yards away was the Golden Lion, chanting something over a roaring fire, his armour a bit more battered since last we met those many years ago.
We had the drop on him. Quietly I drew my bow, taking aim at the back of my enemy's head...
---
...but I didn't account for the chivalrous notions of the nutty knight I was travelling with. Before I could get the shot off, he announced our presence in a bold and quite annoying manner. It's probably just as well. I'd never been one to shoot a man in the back afore, but I was old, bitter, and tired of it all.
Ponce was a younger man than either me or the knight, and wicked fast with his rapier and poniard. If not for the valiant efforts of Don Alfonso, who protected me from many a sword wound with his own melee skills, I'd've been skewered for sure.
The fight went on for what seemed like hours but was more likely minutes. I was nicked up, the knight was bleeding unhealthily, and to make matters worse the roaring fire had gotten scattered in the fray setting the whole place afire. The Golden Lion was looking rather like a Crimson Porcupine what with the blood and arrows sticking out of him.
We clashed again and the Knight went down at the base of the fountain which was now starting to melt while the foul waters within boiled filling the area with a foetid steam.
I remember shouting, "Why won't you die?!"
The smug [censored] laughed at me. He said something arrogant like: "Fools! The water of the fountain has made me immortal."
O' course, you probably already figured out the immortality bit earlier when Don Alfonso mentioned the fountain and Ponce in the bar. You must think I was pretty thick not to've figured it out myself by then.
---
Truth be told, I had figured it out. I was just stalling a moment while the Knight drug himself behind ol' Pompous Ponce.
I let out a roar and drew a special weighted arrow I'd come up with, firing it into Ponce's chest and forcing him to stumble backward, stunned. I fired a second time, and he staggered back again bumping into the knight and almost tripping into the fountain which was now a mass of molten gold and seething water. I hafta admit that I gain some pleasure from the sick look of realization that crossed his face at that moment, as I drew the third weighted arrow and loosed it upon him as he stood unbalanced. The arrow hit his chest so hard that the iron weight shattered on his armour. The piteous high-pitched screams as he sank into the boiling water and hot liquid gold were short-lived.
Choking on the foetid steam I ran over to the knight. He was in bad condition and I knew he wasn't gonna make it, but I started to drag him out of the "Golden Fortress" which was bound to collapse on our heads at any moment. As I knelt to pick him up, he grabbed my arm. In a gasping voice he said to me, "Tell me, Sancho, did we win?"
"Aye, Sir Knight," I said glancing worriedly at the fountain, "we won."
And with that he sighed his spirit to its reward. I shed a tear for him over a bottle of whiskey later, but right then I had to concentrate on getting the hell outta Dodge. By then the place was coming down around my ears. There must've been some sort of angel watching over me, but I made it out somehow. As I leapt through the gates of the fortress to freedom, it collapsed in on itself and I watched exhausted as the flaming wreckage sank into the marsh.
---
I made my way back to civilization, a peaceful sense of closure having settled over my life. I expected to maybe live a few more years and then pass on like everyone else.
But I found I had a renewed sense of vigor. The passage of a few years left me feeling restless and in better physical shape than I'd been for awhile. So I took to bounty hunting again, fully expecting that my age would catch up with me on the trail and I'd die a violent death, but at least I'd be doing something I enjoyed.
When I reached my 90s and that renewed sense of vigor still hadn't gone away I began to sense that something wasn't right. Goin' over things in my head, I came to the conclusion that breathing in the vapours of the Fountain of Youth had, for better or worse, given me extreme longevity. And so, here I am in Paragon City, still plying my trade. Times have changed a bit, but I've adapted. Still can't part with my bow, though some say it's an archaic weapon. I have made extensive modifications over the years, however.
And I recently invested in a device called a Quantum Ripper that allows me to bend the laws of three-dimensional space - it sure beats walkin'.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound