Dragonwilds:The Rasmodels

The Rasmodels are a noble family from the mainland of Dragonwilds:Gielinor who arrived on Dragonwilds:Ashenfall during the Third Age. Adept at moving in higher social circles, they became indispensable to the Dragonwilds:Children of Shadows before turning the tables and dominating the order entirely. Their long-standing reputation for poison and a series of escalating incidents eventually forced the family's retreat to Dragonwilds:Dowdun Reach, where the eldest son, Milliburn Rasmodel, rose to become Master of the keep and founder of the Shadow Knights.

Members

Milliburn Rasmodel

Template:Main Milliburn Rasmodel, also known as Lord Rasmodel, was the eldest son of the family and the twenty-fifth Lord of Rasmodel.Template:CiteJournal As Master of Dowdun Reach and founder of the Shadow Knights, he was the most powerful figure in the keep's history. He was known for a methodical, accumulative approach to advantage, expressed in his own words as: "stack opportunities, one on top of the other, and soon you will have an impregnable tower."Template:CiteJournal His body currently remains within the Dragonwilds:Black Knight's Fortress, resurrected and transformed by the energies of the shattered Dreaming Stone, where he unknowingly guards the passage to Dragonwilds:Umbral Sands.

Atilius Rasmodel

Atilius Rasmodel was a knight of considerable renown during an earlier era of Ashenfall's history. An exceptionally capable swordswoman, she became one of Fellhollow's most celebrated fighters and was personally chosen by the dragon Dragonwilds:Imaru to serve among her guards. She took on the title of Dragon Knight of her own accord, and it stuck.Template:CiteJournal When Dragonwilds:Kuldra descended on the region and demanded humanity's destruction, Atilius mounted Dragonwilds:Xikotal and rode into battle against the Godeater. She fell in the attempt, dying at the dragon's side.Template:CiteJournal

Other members

The father of Milliburn and the youngest is not named in any known source. His death at Dowdun Reach was what prompted Milliburn to begin the work of restoring the family's standing.Template:CiteJournal

The youngest of the family is similarly unnamed, known only for the act that brought the family's operations to an end.Template:CiteJournal

History

A noble family originally from the mainland, the Rasmodels carried their aristocratic standing with them when they crossed to Ashenfall.Template:CiteJournal They arrived during the Third Age alongside the broader wave of settlers fleeing the God Wars, with Zamorakian elements moving covertly among the Saradominist expeditions.<ref>Ashenfall — The God Wars</ref> Their access to the upper echelons of society made them immediately valuable to the Dragonwilds:Children of Shadows, for whom influence among the powerful was the primary currency.Template:CiteJournal

The Children of Shadows initially held the family in low regard, dismissing them as preening peacocks with little to offer beyond appearances.Template:CiteJournal They were wrong. The Rasmodels steadily worked their way into positions of authority across the order until the two groups became effectively one and the same.Template:CiteJournal The family's schemes in Dragonwilds:Temple Woods and Bramblemead carried risks, and they demanded protection in return for their services. Members of the Children were assigned to guard them, an arrangement that planted the seed of what would later become the Shadow Knights.Template:CiteJournal Alongside this scheming the family maintained a visible public presence in Bramblemead, competing regularly in the archery tournaments held there. Their names were etched into trophies often enough that the family became as recognised for their skill at arms as for their noble blood.Template:CiteJournal

The family had long carried a reputation for poison throughout Temple Woods and Bramblemead; locals knew better than to leave food or drink unattended in their presence.Template:CiteJournal When a family member was eventually caught in the act, suspicion became established fact and the Rasmodels were expelled from the region to Dowdun.Template:CiteJournal The notoriety followed them and proved, on the whole, more asset than liability; few in Dowdun Reach were willing to risk crossing them.Template:CiteJournal The clearest example of this came through a childhood incident involving a young Milliburn and his cousin. Milliburn wagered he could shoot an apple from his cousin's head and won the bet, but the cousin then ate a portion of the apple and died. Milliburn's explanation, that he had unknowingly used one of his father's tainted hunting Arrow, was credible enough to go unproven, but the doubt it raised followed him for years. By the time he was eight, few in Dowdun Reach felt comfortable sharing a room with him.Template:CiteJournal

The family's position in the wider region collapsed when the youngest was discovered attempting to poison a sleeping bailiff. With their cover gone, they lost the influence and entourage they had built up and were confined within the walls of the keep, a wing of which was given over to them.Template:CiteJournal After the death of the family's father, Milliburn threw himself into the running of Dowdun Reach, taking on the training of forces and the management of its quartermasters. The family pressed him to restore what had been lost, and he answered that pressure by proving himself indispensable.Template:CiteJournal His qualities as a leader were recognised and he was elected Master of the keep, whereupon the Children of Shadows began referring to him as Lord Rasmodel.Template:CiteJournal His bodyguards never left his side.

Lord Rasmodel's tenure was characterised by a persistent and worsening sleeplessness. Two entities contended for his mind through his dreams, their voices monotonous and unrelenting, and he found them as wearing as the company of a tiresome nobleman.Template:CiteJournalTemplate:CiteJournal Those around him learned to gauge his temper by the time of day.Template:CiteJournal His working relationship with Archmage Alric frayed steadily, with Rasmodel at times suspecting Alric of engineering his nightly torment. Deciding the situation required a structural solution, he drew his most loyal bodyguards into a new knightly order built around his personal command. The Shadow Knights were the result, and the order would grow harder over time into the Black Knights.Template:CiteJournal Throughout his rule, Lord Rasmodel was seldom seen without his mithril warhammer. On mornings when his sleep had been worst it supported him; in the afternoons it served as a quiet warning to those nearby. He regarded naming weapons as a juvenile habit, but observers noted that he would occasionally rest a hand on the hammer's head in an unguarded moment.Template:CiteJournal

When an infernal demon broke loose during a Shadow Knight training session and killed the recruits, Rasmodel and Alric withdrew together to settle matters privately. The outcome was that Rasmodel assumed sole authority over the Dragonwilds:Dreaming Stone and the power it generated, with the demonic portal placed under strict rationing.Template:CiteJournal The madness that had haunted Rasmodel's own sleep soon began manifesting among the Shadow Knights themselves. The afflicted fell not to any visible wound but to an erosion of mind, some fixating on the Dreaming Stone with a devotion that resembled worship. Rasmodel visited those on the edge of collapse. Among them was a soldier he had known years before, who now spoke in tones eerily reminiscent of the voice from his dreams. He left her bedside without a word and received no further visitors that day.Template:CiteJournal As more of the afflicted took on that same quality, he noticed that his presence among them seemed to draw them back to coherence momentarily, each one pressing him with a variant of the same instruction: yield to the Dreaming Stone. He began to consider whether the affliction had come to Dowdun specifically for him.Template:CiteJournal

Rasmodel chose destruction over submission and brought his warhammer down on the stone.Template:CiteJournal The stone broke and the voices stopped. For the first time in years he felt something close to peace. What followed, however, was worse than what had come before.Template:CiteJournal

In the silence after the shattering, Rasmodel found himself surrounded by a vision of the entire Rasmodel family gathered and dressed as they would have been at the height of the family's standing. His father knelt before him. "Rest," he said. "We will take it from here." Milliburn Rasmodel, twenty-fifth Lord of Rasmodel, took his retirement.Template:CiteJournal What he experienced as a peaceful end was in reality his claiming: the two entities that had fought over his mind through the Dreaming Stone took him as their spoils when the stone shattered, and his body has remained within the Black Knight's Fortress ever since.Template:CiteJournal