Author's Note: I know, it's a bit short... just a bit.
This is series was coined after another RP series I am writing for my main, Tunaak... Richard Lyonhart is not mine, and thus, after I post a chapter, it may likely be subject to changes and alterations according to the mind who made him. I thought this toon one of the very few that truly stood out and this first chapter is pretty much to introduce him and where he "comes from."
Lyonhart, A World Between
The battle was chaotic at best. Utter, shear, unrelenting chaos that seemed to have no end. The Exodar was their target, the only salvation that the Prophet had led them to. A salvation... that came with as much sacrifice as it came with victory. The toll on their people was as tremendous as the toll the Orcs and ogres took.
In the final hours of the battle, the Draenei were finally gaining on the Blood Elves, slowly pushing the slowly diminishing army to their knees. A small handful of Draenei, after ensuring they were victorious, began clamoring to some of the cryo-pods. They didn't know how long they would be sleeping again, but it was perhaps better than being one of the few who had to stay awake to watch over them. It could be another 25 thousand years before they found a refuge from the Burning Legion.
Two parents parted from the battle with their son in the mother's arms and their daughter closely following. Their small battalion had been extraordinarily fortunate to have met with very few Blood Elf interaction, although it pained most of them that for every Blood Elf they didn't slay for their people's survival, it was one more Blood Elf that could kill another of their diminishing numbers.
In a corner of the Exodar, the woman held her baby for a moment longer, glancing a pleading eye to her husband every few seconds. They had to separate themselves. There were three cryo-pods, and the pods would likely malfunction if more than one being was put in the suspended animation state... which left one of the four draenei to remain awake. The two siblings were put each put in a pod and activated, the two parents to the one pod.
Before they could utter more than a sentence, battle shouts erupted from their battalion. Taking up their weapons, they gladly went into battle to defend the children, unbeknownst to either of their offspring that their parents would meet their final moments.
That pipes and wires that held their wing of the Exodar to the main vessel snapped and broke as the Nethership strained to enter the Twisting Nether. The emergency doors shut the wing off completely as the Exodar's malfunctioned and began careening through the pitch Nether. Loud explosions boomed and echoed, the wing finally having had too much strain and tore off the main ship.
As the battalion and the Blood Elves fought, each side diminishing as quickly as the other, section with the cryo-pods broke free from the wing of the Exodar. As the Nether sucked out the contents and bodies of the wing, the cryo-pods hurtled through the Nether freely. As the sister's pod was washed in flickering lights, it vanished from the infant's pod. Light soon engulfed the remaining occupied pod, lightning lacing around it as it also vanished from the free floating wing, debris and corpses.
The infant's pod hurtled through an anomaly and into the skies of Westfall. A pair of elderly farmers looked up when the pod made a loud crack of thunder when it appeared. The couple watched the pod hurtle into the ocean, sending a wave that nearly went to their knees on the shore.
When the pod finally reached the sandy shore, the couple curiously approached. With a hiss, the pod's door swung open, revealing the baby alien. The couple glanced at each other curiously. The woman was the first to approach, her husband making a reluctant grunt before joining her. She gently picked up the alien creature with a soft smile, holding him for her husband to see
Although he insisted on leaving the child, the woman was stubborn and finally convinced him this child was a gift from the Light. They took him home to their farmstead, naming him Richard Lyonhart.
A year passed before a Night Elf traveled through their home. The Priest nearly killed the baby before hesitating. This child, he looks so much like an Eredar, had no traces of evil on him. No tainted touch of fel magics, seeming no Eredun workings on him... But he looked so much like an Eredar.
The couple, panicked, readily sent a summons to Stormwind's Cathedral of Light to help reassure that their adopted child was not evil. A young Paladin was quickly sent. The Paladin, with the help of the Priestess, combined their experiences with the Light to further interrogate any possibility of evil magics that could be working within the baby. None were found.
Four more years passed and Richard learned at an astounding rate. He learned quicker than other children around four or five years. Every time the couple would try to introduce Richard to neighbors with children around his age, they would always look down on the youngster like he was no more than a swine or worse, a demon.
Eventually, the old couple gave him up to the Cathedral. Archbishop Benedictus would flat out decline Richard at first, but eventually accepted him when he saw Richard's first reaction to a passing Priest practicing a common spell with the Light. Richard, then not even five years old, had demonstrated what extraordinarily few children his age could do: wield the Light.
The couple relieved that the Archbishop accepted him left Richard at the Cathedral. He never saw them again as Benedictus led the crying youngling through the corridors of the Cathedral. Richard was taken to Vindicator Argonus, whom was eager to take Richard as a student.
The years went by quickly, Richard learning from Argonus at a rate that astounded the Vindicator. At the beginning, Argonus treated Richard almost like a son. But as the years passed, Argonus became more distant, as if there were other interests of far more worth than his pupil.
Eventually being left alone and abandoned again, Richard found comfort only in the Light. It never ceased to keep him warm in the crypts of the Cathedral. He was kept as a very tight secret, for the Cathedral feared of how the public would react if they new of him. They feared Richard would be perceived as a demon that disguised itself by wielding the Light.
And then, the Draenei came. It was quite a shock to the few who knew of Richard, none saw them coming. The Exodar careened recklessly over the skies of Kalimdor, crashing into Azuremyst Isle. Though the Night Elves and a small fleet of Stormwind's navy were first to respond to the Nethership's crash site, both sides met with very unnerved senses. The Night Elves explained they looked just like their Eredar brothers, and the Draenei did not know whether to consider the newfound races potential allies, or another race that wanted to destroy.
After the shock of the Draenei' appearance, Benedictus declared that the Cathedral's secret captive be released. It wasn't long before the Cathedral came under great scrutiny of the Draenei that learned of Richard. Though they frowned upon the Human's Cathedral, they did not openly oppress their allies.
Most of the Draenei that learned of Richard rejected him for being raised as a human. Richard could not speak or read his native tongue. Some had taken him to the Exodar to teach him. He tried learning, but the Draenei' tongue was far more complex than he first thought, and failed miserably. The Draenei who tried teaching him, one by one, left him.
After leaving the Cathedral one crisp afternoon, Richard turned to the path leading around it to the gazebo.
