Haven Arnimane - The past

[Vaxel]

//Just a start to the story, hopefully will get around to adding on to it soon enough.
//Italics = Haven speaking
//Bold = Havens thoughts

During a rainy night, down a dark street in the City of Waterdeep, laughter and cheer could be heard through the walls of a tavern. A hooded lone man walks down the tiled pavement, rats scavenging for scraps by the door of the tavern would scatter as he stops at the entrance, he looks up at the hanging Inn sign for a moment, “The Yawning Portal Inn”, then slips a hand into a pocked within the coat he wears, pulling out a holding a parchment containing information about the location of a meeting, he looks at it for a moment before slipping it away again within his coat, then reaches out to grab the cold door handle to open the door. As the goes inside, he pulls down his hood and looks around, several groups of drunken men gather around different tables holding flagons of ale, speaking of primitive subjects, the occasional woman could be seen, however they were usually acting just the same. His eyes settle on a door in the corner, left slightly ajar, he approaches it and can hear the sounds of a large group, conversing with each other, but this time rather different to the usual talk that’s heard.
The man then places a hand on the old oak door and pushes it open to be seen by a group of at least a dozen people, some wearing some form of protective clothing or armour, others with weapons at their sides or strapped to their back.
As he closes the door behind him, a large 6’7” half orc walks up to him with his arms folded, sporting a scowl.
“Whut yoo doin’ ‘ere, shorteh?”
The man turns to face him and pulls out the parchment again and shows it to the half orc, although he raises a brow to the idea as he does so, wondering if he can even actually read.
The half orc opens the parchment and squints as he slowly reads parts of the letter, then looks down to the 6’ man.
“Oh… Da baws gave ya this?”
The man nods, looking about the place for a moment before asking,
“Where is he?”
“Awright. E’s in dere.” The half orc says as he turns and lifts a hulking arm up and a large finger, to point at another door, to the right of the room, this time shut.
The man nods to the half orc and proceeds to the door, opening it and closing it behind him.
A human sits by the desk wearing studded leather with several papers and drawings of several different locations, some which seems to have dried drops of blood dotted on them, or smudged into the ink. He looks up from his desk at who just entered and grins, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.
“Ah, Haven, was it?”
Haven takes a couple of steps towards him and nods.
“I’m here to take you up on that offer.”
“The expedition to undermountain?”
“Yes.”
The man nods, his grin turns into a smile as he beckons him over. Haven follows and stands on the other side of the desk.
“Call me Jake, as you’ve probably found out, I’m the leader of this expedition.. Now, I understand that you’d like to be filled in about the whole situation. But I can explain that on our way down, since we’ll be heading off very shortly...”
The man then pushes forward a sheet of paper, with the leaders’ signature and an blank next to it, Haven looks down at it, then back at Jake.
“Now or never.”
Jake grins as he promptly passes a quill to Haven, then leans back in his chair watching Havens cautious reaction.
“I’ve heard the stories before you know. Many have fallen down there...”
“And what makes you think we will? I have the best men and women money can buy in the other room, but... If you don’t want to join, don’t sign.”
Jake still remains grinning.
“More fortune for me to split amongst me and the crew, if you don’t join. And you’d have missed the chance of a lifetime.”
Haven narrows his eyes at Jake for a moment, then looks down at where he’s to sign.
The money would certainly come in handy... But what if we fail?—What if they succeed and I just lost my chance...?
Haven frowns and looks at Jake.
“Why didn’t you give me further notice to think this through?...”
Jake narrows his eyes at Haven and frowns slightly
“I’m a busy man, Haven. I don’t have time to arrange meetings whenever. Are you in, or out?”
“Tch... Fine. I’m in...”
Haven signs the paper, which immediately brings a pleased smile to Jakes face, as soon as he finishes signing; the papers are almost instantly swiped away from him by Jake and slipped into his pocket, causing Haven to doubt what he just did was smart...
“Excellent! Everybody is waiting in the other room. We’ll begin out descent down the Well in the basement of the Inn immediately, that’s the most known entrance.”
Jake grabs a few things and opens the door for Haven for him to walk out.
“After you.”
Haven walks out, followed promptly by Jake afterwards, who closes the door behind him and locks it.
The leader walks off to speak to some of the other people in the crowd of adventurers, while Haven lays down the belongings and begins to ready himself for the venture, donning his armour, checking his blade and testing his shield.
Soon after he’s all set, the call is made and everyone walks off to the basement of the Inn.

The descent begins.

[Vaxel]

//Changing the style a bit... Faster.

As the group decended and took their first step into the dungeon below, the man infront of Haven, who happened to also be a fighter, took his first step forward and made his last mistake.
A tile on the floor was pressed down by his foot, and spikes in the blink of an eye came from both sides of the wall, penetrating the man from both sides, he died before he hit the floor.

This was already enough to strike fear into thoes who witnessed it... Haven, whom was standing just behind him, easily imagined that that could have been him.. If he took point.

As the group ventured further, and further down. More and more were lost. Eventually it windled down to Haven, and Jake...

Haven stopped Jake for a moment to get his attention...

"This is suicide, if we go down any further, it's only a matter of time until we both die. What good is fortune when we're corpses? I'm going back."

Jake quickly drew a knife and held it to Havens neck before he could react and spoke tones of anger and frustration in his voice.

"You signed the contract, so you have to follow what I say. And I say we go further down. If you have a problem with that, you can go ahead and bleed out on the floor right now. Make your choice."

Haven frowns and grits his teeth for a moment.

"Tch... Fine, further down it is then..."

They continue down, and did surprisingly well for a few moment, until they encountered a Drow Outpost... A watchman spotted the two and called the alarm. Drow ran out after them in overwhelming numbers to fight them.
Haven and Jake stood back to back trying to fight them off, however they only lasted secounds... Haven heard screaming from Jake and quickly turned his head to look.. By the time he did, he was already completely mutilated, and at that point, everything was going black. Haven almost immidately after fell unconcious from blood loss, his plate was the only thing that kept him more alive than Jake's studded leather... But even then... He took a lot of hits...

Darkness closes in.

[Vaxel]

//WARNING: The following contains scenes of torture, please avoid reading if you dislike such or are squeamish.

Haven weakly opens his eyes to look around, everything seemed to be a blur to him at the time, all he could tell was the room was dark and that he could barely move at this point.
A blurry figure approaches him and grabs his face, forcefully moving it from side to side to check if Haven is actually conscious, he lets out a tired groan which causes the figure to chuckle lightly, it sounded slightly feminine.
His vision recovering, Haven realises he’s naked and covered with bandages and stitches, chained up to a wall with his hands and feet in a small chamber filled with torture devices, his eyes go wide at the scene and looks to the person who grabbed him, it appeared to be a female Drow smiling at him as she approaches extremely close to Haven, simply remaining inches away from his face as she starts to speak in a quite tone.
“You and I will be spending –a lot- of time together, dear.”
Haven frowns slightly and tries to move, only to wince in pain, due to his not fully recovered wounds.
“What... What do you want?”
The Drow woman smirks and puts on a playful voice.
“Why, I want you to obey, dear.”
“...Obey..?”
“Mmmm.”
The Drow woman nods slightly as she runs a hand down his bare chest, then stopping when she reaches a bandage.
“When I’m done with you, you’ll be just like the rest. A slave to us.”
The Drow pulls a wicked grin and rips off the bandage around his chest to reveal a stitched wound, she then throws the bandage off to the side, turns around and walks to one of the tables with several different sorts of serrated and curved blades.
She begins to hover a hand over them all wondering which one to choose first, whilst Haven tries to look around desperately for a way out of this situation, from the walls and exit, to the chains he’s bound to, any weak points... Structural errors... Or even a tool or some sort he could use which he could reach... Unfortunately, there was nothing of the sort for him, with that he looks over to the Drow and speaks in a rushed tone.
“I... Can tell you anything, you want that more, right? You want to destroy Waterdeep? I could tell you information about the area... There’s really no need for this...”
Although his voice sounded like me meant the truth, his plan was to speak believable lies; the Drow however picks up a thin blade and turns to Haven, smiling sweetly.
“We know all we need to about that place, what do you think all the others used to stall with, dear?”
Haven tries to pull a scared and forced grin, trying to say whatever he can to keep the woman at bay.
“Erm... Their dancing skills?”
The woman chuckles softly for a little moment, finding the idea mildly amusing, before falling immediately into a serious face and approaches him.
“Enough talking for now, hm? It’s time you started to bleed for me, dear.”
The woman lays a hand upon his chest, and slowly moves the blade closer to his stitched up wound, Haven can only watch helplessly in fear about what’s to come next.
She places the tip of the blade on one end of where the wound begins, then slowly presses it into the wound and drags it across, cutting all the threads in the stitch, causing the wound to gape open slightly, causing Haven to scream out in pain which brought a smile on the woman’s face. It would have been a cleaner cut if it wasn’t for Haven reflexively twitching by trying to move away from the pain.
After she finishes the cut she pulls the blade back and licks the blood off it.
“Mmmmm, thank you, dear.”
Haven pants heavily as he tilts his head back trying to get a hold of himself, clenching his eyes shut.
I must escape... I WILL escape... Focus... Never drop this thought... You cannot give in.
“It’s such a shame your friend didn’t survive the assault, then I would have had two people to play with, wouldn’t that have been fun?”
She smiles to Haven for a moment, then frowns as she realises he’s not listening to her, keeping his eyes shut and ignoring his surroundings. This causes her to promptly turn around and put the blade back, and this time pick up a long, serrated blade.
Returning to Haven, she places the blade on his right thigh and presses it down, it doesn’t draw blood, the skin managing to just barely maintain under the pressure of the serrated edges, and then suddenly, she violently pulls the blade to the side, tearing some of his skin and flesh off.
Haven screams out again and curses several times, tears running down his face from his clenched shut eyes from the unbearable pain of it all...
Such torture carried on for what Haven thought of as weeks, but they wouldn’t let him die, simply give him time for his wounds to recover enough to carry on. The sheer pain caused him to shift in and out of consciousness many times... And each time he’d dream of freeing himself or others freeing him. The idea to be free was so embedded into him; it’s all he could think about, it’s all that kept him sane... Or so he thought.
Every time he managed to accomplish such in his dreams, they carried on... They didn’t end there; he’d escape Undermountain and live another life... Each time it was different. From the way he became free to the way he lived his life afterwards... He even fell in love with a figment of his imagination once... A beautiful goldish blonde woman named Natasha, she was kind and caring to him, and eventually Haven confessed his love to her, they lived together happily for awhile, Haven thought for sure the world he was living in was real this time, that he was truly free... But then one “night”, he went to sleep with her, in her loving embrace... Only to wake up in the torture chamber, alone, the woman he thought he loved, that he thought was real, never existed, he was never free, and that he’s still stuck in this damnable place to be tortured again... The mental pain it caused him at the time caused a large mental scar inside him... And also caused him to doubt any existence he might be in, be it real or fake...

Eventually, he was let down from his chains, leaving him to slump down onto him knees, with limp arms... During which time a collar was put onto him, and he was forced up and out of the chamber. Havens expression at the time was vacant... As if he lost something during that torture... Which he believes he did.

As he exited the chamber, he could see all about the outpost, the Drow walking about running their own errands, and guards patrolling the areas, as well as watchmen keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.
He was quickly shoved to the floor, on his hands and knees, and the woman who tortured her crouches down in front of him and brings a hand under his chin, slowly lifting his head to look at her; she smiles sweetly as she speaks.
“Now, you be a good boy now, or else if you start misbehaving... It’s back in the chamber with me, dear.”
Just listening to the word “dear” has caused him to wince due to how much he relates the accursed word to pain.
Afterwards, clothes were thrown in front of him, which he slowly put on. He was too exhausted at the time to do anything fast... Or even speak. All he could do was think, look and listen at the time.

After a little moment of getting dressed, Haven was suddenly yanked along by a chain attached to his collar; he looked over to notice it’s a male Drow, in armour seeming to probably be one of the patrollers. Haven follows the Drow silently as he looks about, taking the whole area in, it was rather easy for him due to the fact he was locked up in a chamber for what felt like years... At least he was very mildly glad there’s a change of scenery... But better yet, this is where he can start to plan some sort of escape, whether this existence is real or not, he can’t take any chances.

The plans begin to form.