Shiver is my bard on a private Ragnarok Online server I play, so I thought that i'd wright a story about him. :3
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For Shiver it started as a means of escape.
He spends his days traveling around Rune Midgard, singing his stories. String after string of deeds of bravery, myths, and legends pour from his mouth to surround the people who stop to listen. His fingers dance along the strings of his lute, like a man would trace the contours of his lover's body, gentle and caring. Shiver is meant to do this; singing the stories of the gods and heroes of yesterday and playing the sweet melodic sounds that will captivate and ensnare. There is nothing in the world Shiver wants more than to sing and play. He does it for anyone and everyone; as long as there are people to listen he will play. Shiver's nights are spent in the many taverns and bars of the cities and towns he visits. He will sing for the patrons, and after a round of songs about some long forgotten legend he himself will drown in alcohol along with the many others. On frequent occasions Shiver picks up a woman, a man, it makes no difference, and lures them back to the rented room of some inn with a rickety sign barely connected by a rusted chain. He lost count of how many shared his bed long ago, never being the same one twice. This is his life; his sole existence. Though Shiver's profit may be meager it has always been enough to keep him alive. One does not need to pay rent when one stays in the
same place for no more than one week at a time. He is nomadic by nature, roaming the world to share his stories of the past, and has no problem with sleeping outside on the cold hard ground or in a stranger‘s bed. His income comes in the form of passing Midgardians tossing zeny into his lute case if whatever he was playing pleased them enough to think it worth anything. If Shiver were lucky a love struck man would offer him a nice amount of zeny to have a song written and played just for his target of affection. He always makes sure he has enough to keep him fed along with alcohol pulsing through his veins. Maybe, just maybe, Shiver isn't as content with his life as he would like people to believe. As he grows older day after day, the constant singing has started to take it's toll on his voice. At the age of 24, already his voice is dulling and starting to wither. A life of singing does and has taken it's toll on him. If gold could sing it would be in the form of Shiver's voice...or it would have been. Anymore, it can barely
be considered silver. Not only did the constant strain affect his voice, but his condition as well. They have no name for it, but the effects of it are devastating for a man of his profession. Slowly it will infect his vocal cords until one day all that is left is the shadow of the voice it once had been. What good is a bard without his voice?
It isn't his fault...it's not. It is a little thing called genetics. No one has control over genetics; no one can stop what is happening to him.
This is why Shiver spends his night drinking himself into oblivion and luring anything that breathes into his bed. Man or woman, it doesn't matter as long as they can help him forget about his troubles in the meantime. The haze of the alcohol and the body heat has not been enough for awhile now. That is exactly the reason he needed to find something stronger, and he has found it; however, as much as it is helping him forget his troubles, he is also losing himself to this drug, if that's what you could even call it.
No one seems to know what to call it anymore; a helpful tool, a drug, poison. In a sense it is a poison but not quite. There is a little-known trick for the Sins out there: EDP. Enchant Deadly Poison, the art of consuming a diluted poison from a red plant. It gives the Sins a kick, helps them hit a little bit faster and a little bit harder, but at what cost? They completely lose themselves, wrapped up in a blanket of confusion, to the point
that they can barely tell friend from foe. The Sins forget everything and turn into killing machines. What, though, would happen to a person that wasn't fighting?
It has the same effect as any other drug...except it's better than any other drug out there. The effects are faster but so is the addiction rate.
For Shiver it is now an addiction.
Shiver NEEDS to forget. He survives by forgetting because he can't deal with the fact that he is not going to be able to do what he loves and excels at. Well, he was a god among bards until that damned condition started to take effect. And now what does he do; works at an inn. He cleans the rooms, checks people in - all of what comes with working at such a facility. He deems it pathetically worthy though, because it means a roof over his head and food in his stomach...and extra cash to buy more of his addiction. The only person he ever sings for anymore is himself and that's only when he's too jacked up on RED to realize what he's doing. He's so used to functioning with it in his veins, with his vision all fogged up and his head swimming that anymore he runs on autopilot.
He wakes up and takes a small dose, just enough so he can get through the day; just enough that he can still maintain enough coherency to do his job. The day anymore is
just a hurdle to get over until his shift is over and he can scurry off to his room for a bigger and better dosage. When he starts to remember his name then he knows that it's time to go back to his source of the poison and ask for a stronger hit. He will continue this cycle over and over, and each time he can remember his name through the fog he'll make his way back to that one alley in Prontera with the shady man next to the tipped over garbage can. Each time Shiver will ask for stronger doses until the man refuses because they just can't get it any stronger; any stronger and it's going to kill him.
A promise not to mention where he's been getting the RED and 500,000 zeny later, Shiver is walking back to his little room in the inn with the pure undiluted substance. He cradles it in his arms gently, caring for it as if it was a lover. A deadly lover that is going to end up killing him. He knows what will happen if he takes it...or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he's forgotten everything he knows about RED because of the constant drain of the drug on his mind. RED has replaced the singing, the playing, the alcohol, the bed mates, his existence, and now it's going to replace his life.
For Shiver it is his death.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know that RED isn't real in the game, but I had spun this little story in my head just this summer.
Do you like it? Hate it? Don't really care?
Also the world of Ragnarok Online belongs strictly to Gravity, which I do not own. And no money is being made off of this at all.
Comments and suggestions are welcomed. x3<3
