Tahquitz (Triumph)/RP
Old Roleplaying Story
Part 1: When The Heavens Cry
Tim Verne never felt rain hit so hard in his life.
As his young legs lifted his body further and further up the San Jacinto Mountain Range, he marched on further away from Palm Springs, away from those who hazed him everyday at school, climbing up towards the realm of the very gods. A world he’s never seen before. A world he thinks he doesn’t belong in or understand.
It was getting cloudy that afternoon before the soccer game, and it was the last period. His captain, lining up a shot to getting the team back on the way to recovering their zero score and hopefully winning the game was covered on all sides except for one, and he knew it. The frustration of his father’s pressure, his friends’ comments about having his last season in the Middle School soccer team being a losing one for the first time in two years, and the pain in his left knee building to a crescendo, all of it leading to a glimpse in the corner of his eye. A blonde haired, half Indian kid named Tim who doesn’t belong anywhere in competitive sports, and he knows he’s the only person who can make the winning shot.
Sleeping Bear, or Richard Verne as he was known at work, was at the construction site for the last 12 hours before coming home to Agua Caliente Reservation the night before he had to go back for another shift, unfortunately during his son’s last soccer game of the year. He remembers telling Tim stories of his past ancestors, stories of valor, pride, and honor, which Tim loved so much as a child. But now, with the pressure of teenagers, the loss of Cloudborn Star, his wife, only a year ago, and a project along Interstate 10 that is behind the deadline, and probably will be for yet another year, all he can hope for is a peaceful night’s sleep for him and his only son.
Tim’s sight was beginning to fail him as he ascended into the storm’s full force on the Eastern face of the mountain range. The wind was shoving him around so freely, it felt like he was pushing through a crowd of people. He wanted so desperately to stop, but he could not. His pain was so deep that night that physical anguish couldn’t silence it.
As the sun began to set in the hills, drawing a shadow in front of the field, Tim saw the shot arch off of the captain’s foot and approach so cleanly toward him. It was a little high, but it was possible. He could feel a light drizzle start to brush his face and the rough squeak the grass made on his cleats as he stepped carefully backwards. He was at the landing point, all he had to do… he saw the ball get skillfully knocked away from him as a player lunged ahead of Tim and he never finished that thought.
Richard was checking back into work once more, having only a few moments to grief himself for missing Tim’s soccer game. The only contact he had was dropping him off that Saturday with a snack for halftime, and the promise every parent blindly enters into upon seeing their children off for the last time before something important to them… “Good luck, son. I’ll see you at home.” As Richard punched the timeclock and headed to the worksite, he heard a sharp and odd sound… like a wire being plucked. What he didn’t see the guy wires break at the 5th floor of the Hotel steelframe, releasing a dozen two-ton I-Beams heading straight down to him. As he looked up, he knew he had only one shot, all he had to do… as a bright red beam twisted down from the lowering gauntlet he never finished that thought.
Tim was shivering from the cold rain striking his soaked clothes. His tears were filling his eyes the entire night as he ascended the mountains further. It’s been six hours since he started to run from the pain of that horrible moment. All he had to do…
... was to find shelter. Nothing rang more clearly in his head all night. He sees in the distance a small cave, its mouth pointing downward to avoid the wind and rain flowing all over the mountain. He climbs once more, promising himself rest and finding a reserve of energy he never knew he had.
It’s just like in the stories he heard as a young boy. Richard told him about a monstrous being that guarded this mountain who defended its inhabitants, who protected the mountain people and animals, who was at both times fearful and comforting to Tim right now, as he entered this cave, and was able to be dry for the first time that night. He took his shirt off and wringed out the water before putting it back on, as he proceeded down the lightning-lit landscape of the cave slowly. Fatigue won finally as Tim lowered himself to the ground on a mat covered in dust and sand on the floor. He felt the dryness and settled himself to sleep.
For the next day would change his life forever…
Part 2: The Path Will Be Made Known
His mind was blank that night as he slept, except for one thought… his given Indian name. In his culture, upon the moment of one’s birth, two words are chosen from a moment occurring at the same time to give a new child their name. His father was born in the 1950’s as his mother was in labor at a camp in the mountains next to a bear that happened to be asleep through his delivery. His grandfather was born in the desert mountains next to a Salt Cedar whose bark was dark grey from the lack of water, yet afforded his family shade on that hot summer day. His mother was born in the fall of night as a star was seen arising from a passing rain cloud breaking apart to reveal a peaceful night.
Tim Verne was born named Rabbit Paw. His mother insisted on a lucky rabbit foot being with her as a reminder of her deceased father’s first gift to her as a little girl. Sleeping Bear was angered with her insisting on the keepsake being brought to her during labor, and out of spite of that argument, she named her son Rabbit Paw, reminding Sleeping Bear of the little things that give great reward in life.
The only reward Rabbit Paw was afforded after sleep was that of the emptiness that filled his mind upon waking… upon feeling his now dry clothes draping his body, clammy and chilled from the moist air of the mountain now flowing everywhere in the cave from the leeward winds going up the mountain face from the valley. The dulled light from the sun illuminated his surroundings, a cave that was to his surprise, filled with things. He was sleeping on a wicker mat hewn from the bark of trees, next to baskets full of clothing, dreamcatchers hung in the walk towards the exit of the cave, knapsacks of items beside him on the ground, and a large bear pelt upon the wall, once put there to dry and cure, now long forgotten.
Tim lowered the pelt from the wall and wrapped himself in it’s dusty but welcomed warmth, as he felt a warm breeze from further down in the cave, in a part of the cave he didn’t notice before. A crack in the wall with a large stitched wolfskin that was once stretched over the opening, but fell down from the failing weathered straps now dry-rotted. The breeze had a musty smell to it, not belonging to the rest of his surroundings. He stepped towards the crack, and walked in near total darkness, with only his hands and careful footing guiding his way.
Remembering from his youth trips into the mountains with his grandfather, Grey Tree, a lesson on keeping alive inside of a unfamiliar cavern: tread lightly where one cannot see, and put your weight on the foot behind you. One wrong step could have you falling to your death. Tim was meandering through a lowering cavern as he felt the breeze become much stronger. It enveloped him, as it grew and the musty scent of dust becoming more pungent as Tim began to see light ahead of him.
The walls of the cavern were carved in something he’s never seen before, writing that seemed neither European or Indian, picures and glyphs that were rounded and Indian-like, slowly becoming more visible as he found his way into an antechamber of sorts, a round, conical room in the cave with a crack in the ceiling letting the mountain wind inside and a trickle of water flowing down the side of the mountain falling into a pool to the side and out into another hallway of the cave pointing downwards to the base of the mountain. The room had a shrine in the center carved from a stalagmite and stalactite meeting in the room to form a column worn from years of the rainwater flowing into it and out of the room. Before the shrine lay a necklace of tourmaline and jade with a onyx stone with the crest of a bird carved into the rock.
One other feature of the room caught his eye: a side of the room with very recognizable Indian writing and pictographs of a man with a raven’s head and broad winged arms that waved fire into the surrounding hillside, and a back covered with ice and snow. Unfortunately, Tim couldn’t read the writing below the petroglyph, which said “When the Heaven’s Cry, the path will be made known. The sun shall rise on the land the next day, and Tahquitz will live once more to protect the mountain people.”
He picked up the necklace from the ground, seeing it shimmer in the sunlight in his hands, it’s dark brown Onyx amulet and bright aquagreen necklace. Tim lowered it onto his neck carefully, admiring it’s weight and odd cleanliness: in a dusty cave, it looked like time had no effect on it’s form.
Then Tim noticed that his hand was changing color… to solid black.
He was terrified of what was happening, scrambling to the walls in fear, as it crept up his arms and spread around his neck, enveloping his head and hair. He felt an odd sense of calm strike him as he suddenly wanted to let the change envelop him for one simple reason: he was no longer was in pain. His aching knees from the near 8 mile hike were cool and relaxed. His mind, once stricken with grief and anguish from the worst day in his life was altered to the kind memories of his father’s life, how he helped him during his Grandfather’s days, and how his grandfather was comforted by his elders during the final years of the Indian Wars in the 1800’s—knowledge he didn’t have before this moment.
Now he knew everything about this mountain, it’s people, the warring neighbors with pale skin who ruined the lands and built upon it, robbing it of life. He knew of the eras before, of the people from the sun who migrated from the south and became the caretakers of this mountain, of the ruin that preceded their arrival that ended the lives of the people who introduced him to this mountain, who were of temples and ancient power. Who knew the very sun itself in all of her forms, who in turn gave birth to him, the Raven God, the protector of the night skies. He was now no longer Tim Verne, no longer Rabbit Paw, but Tahquitz.
At the base of the mountain, on a Sunday morning in 2007, if one looked carefully, one could see a dark figure ascending into the skies for the first time in 200 years, who was simultaneously liberated and captive to the mountain he has been entrusted to for so many eons.
Part 3: The Sun Shall Rise On The Land
After that initial flight, Tahquitz began to slowly remember the past of a thousand years as he saw his new domain. A mountain surrounded by suburban sprawl that now makes up Riverside, Yucaipa and Palm Springs, cities of man that were now no longer the domain of the white man that spelled the end of the times of the Indian, but of many, many different people. Realizing that he cannot show himself so readily to the world, he saw inside of his new form the soul of the empowered and marginally scared boy that gave of him a new body, Tim.
In a language without words, Tahquitz wanted to convey to Tim that he was deprived of his true form by a demon in ancient times, forcing the Raven God to accept life as an avatar, a singularity that required a medium, a willing body who allowed themselves to take the form of a god and temporarily allowed Tahquitz to walk among the living once more. He meant Tim only peace and understood as a being outside of time that patience is not a problem for someone such as him. If Tim didn’t want him to, Tahquitz would remain dormant in his necklace in the mountain until someone else would find him and allow him to be liberated once more.
Tim replied, “I need strength right now, and when you’re with me, I am as strong as the very mountain I stand upon. If you help me to move on with my life, I will let you walk in my feet as long as you need to.” As a demonstration of his trust, Tahquitz returned to the necklace, allowing Tim his original form and regaining control of his body once more, yet Tim felt no hunger or pain as he began his slow descent down the face of the peak.
Tim returned to the base of the mountain, to Agua Caliente, into the arms of the Police and authorities who were searching for him all night. He was to become the ward of the state when a neighbor who saw Tim wearing the amulet of Tahquitz entering a cop car to head to Palm Springs. She called a woman in Rhode Island who was in contact with the tribe concerning the legend of Tahquitz… the woman being one of the order of MAGI who promptly found a flight to Ontario, CA to meet Tim and introduce him to her order, to teach him of his gift, and to seek his help in a City of Heroes that so desperately needs his help.
A dark figure ascends over his temporary home in Talos Island, a being that brings Ice and Fire to the skies. A figure that is becoming less Tim Verne, and surprising less of a deity from ancient Inca: his wisdom being tempered with the grim and stark reality of Tim's world, and Tim's fear and uncertainity becoming tempered with boundless courage and power, the new incarnation of Tahquitz now seeks to help those who need protection, while using Paragon City as a training ground of sorts for his eventual return home to his peak in the San Jacinto Range, to resume his post as the sole protector of the people of Agua Caliente and the coming battle with his arch-nemesis, yet to be revealed to the world from his own slumber.
