#the amulet to Jacob (for my Juror Aaron idea) because he obviously sent it to Falconclaw in the hands of a disposable messengers and stayed

[kurithedweeb]

An idea I had last night: Jacob survives.

So, instead of the amulet just making everyone drop dead, we're going with the curse being a plague. (Thank you @irenes-journal for turning the plague amulet idea into what it is today.)

In canon, the amulet kills everyone save the person holding it, so the plague amulet would theoretically grant one person immunity, or at least resistance. How it grants some kind of immunity/resistance is by releasing antibodies for the plague, slowly at first to acclimatize the body a bit before it floods the system, and Jacob got some of the antibodies before he gave it to Aaron.

He was the first to fall ill, and he took twice as long to succumb to the illness than anyone else infected did. The town doctor died before Jacob did, so when he fell into a coma that looked a whole lot like death, he was mistaken for dead.

Lily was barely holding on herself at this point, and Aaron came back from burying the day's dead to find his wife and son dead in Jacob's room. Lily worshipped Menphia and some minor gods, being from Tu'la, and raised Jacob to do the same since Aaron's side of the family doesn't worship any recognized religion (Ultima stuff is for later), and there was a small tomb previously made for when Lily and her children died according to Tu'lan burial practices. Which gives Jacob some more time than he'd have in a grave to get out before he runs out of air.

Aaron goes on burying bodies and surveying the sick while he mourns his own family's loss. Jacob wakes up maybe a day or two later in the dark with what remains of Lily. Obviously, he freaks out, crying out for help, and no one comes. Fueled by adrenalin and fear, he manages to open the tomb door just enough for him to squeeze through, and he finds the streets covered in graves. He has no idea what's going on, no clue how long it's been, but he runs home and his dad's not there and all the streets he's run down are empty and stinking of rot. He needs his dad to not be dead, so he comes up with this idea that obviously Aaron thought he was dead like everyone else and left.

And so Jacob packs a bag and sets out to leave Falconclaw, and he leaves barely an hour before Aaron gets home. They just miss each other.

Jacob isn't well. He collapses on the road and wakes up in a merchant caravan bound for some village way North. He asks if any of them have seen his father, says he's the son of the Lord of Falconclaw, and one of the mercenaries hired to guard the caravan sees an opportunity. By the time the caravan reaches its destination, Aaron is already in O'khasis being groomed by Zane to become a Juror.

Jacob is snatched off the street by the same mercenaries who were guarding the caravan and sold to someone visiting from Tu'la, and he winds up a servant boy for one of the king's vassal clans. Maybe Nana's, maybe the one his mother escaped from. The plague left him incredibly scarred, so for a long time he's a faceless, bandaged figure in the shadows of the house, all this anger and frustration building up inside him at not being able to figure out a way home, until one day the master of the house thinks it'd be funny to match a servant boy against one of his soldier-apprentices.

And Jacob wins. No training, having thrown away his weapon and beaten the other boy with his bare hands until they were dripping in blood. He's sent to the gladiator pits, maybe the same ones Liochant grew up in, and as long as he has his anger he dominates. His contract is bought by some wealthy noble with a penchant for collecting pretty, broken things, and on the road he kills them and flees into the night.

By the time he gets back to O'khasis, Aaron's time on the Jury is over and he's disappeared completely, having forsaken his own name and become The Stranger. This is when Jacob finally hears about, finally confirms, the fall of Falconclaw. He goes to Zianna, waiting for her to be out in town before he approaches her. She and his mother considered themselves sisters, once, and Zianna had been an excellent spy in Tu'la, if anyone would help him it'd be her. All Zianna has to give him is rumors, but anything is better than nothing.

He takes it, he thanks her, he goes on the road trying to find his father, and gets waylaid a bunch on the way by saving people and taking out the mercenary company that sold him to that Tu'lan visitor and into years of servitude and gladiator rings. He had a number of names in Tu'la, but he goes back to the name from a lifetime ago, introducing himself everywhere he goes as Jacob Lycan, son of Aaron Lycan, last Lord of Falconclaw, in an effort to see if his father will be drawn to the man using his son's name. By the time he makes it all the way around to Phoenix Drop, it's the middle of the Irene Dimension time skip, and since no one knew who The Stranger was or ever really saw his face, they don't realize that that's exactly who Jacob is looking for.

He goes back to Falconclaw, thinking maybe he can find some clues where this all started. It's practically the same as he left it since everyone thinks the land is extremely cursed, and in looking through their home he finds books on the teaching of his father's faith. He fits his father's old clothes, his old faith. He takes whatever he cares to keep from the Lycan estate and visits Lily's tomb before he leaves, and not a day later he comes across Abby, who's taken to the road hoping to find a lead on the woman she believes killed her father, Lady Katelyn the Firefist, who disappeared without a trace years ago about the same time High Priest Zane Ro'Meave and a few other Jurors did. She and Jacob agree to help each other and become good friends, and eventually they round back to Phoenix Drop.

A week after Aaron died.

Jacob introduces Abby first, notes that the Lord, or maybe she's the Lord's mother, seems to know who Abby is, and then he introduces himself. As Jacob Lycan, son of Aaron Lycan, last Lord of Falconclaw. And the look on this Lord's face is indescribable. She asks to speak with Jacob alone.

She tells him about his father in the last part of his life. She tells him how he saved her several times, taught her to fight, saved her guards, those two over there. That one he sacrificed himself for just last week, when he saved the man from another realm and finally got vengeance for his family and village. How he once said that when his journey was done, when he had taken the life of the man who cursed them all, he would finally be at peace with his wife and son.

Then there's a child's cry, and suddenly Jacob is being introduced to two little girls who his father helped raise. To his sisters.

He can't even process it properly before he hears Abby scream, and suddenly he is running to pull her off a blue-haired woman and holding her, thrashing and spitting vitriol, yelling how she thought of Katelyn like her mother, as Katelyn explains what really happened that day, and everything Abby has been keeping inside her for years spills out in wave after wave of tears. She clings to Jacob, and he finds himself crying too. If only they had known the truth earlier.

If they'd only learned the truth earlier, Abby wouldn't have spent so long hating an innocent woman she once adored, and Jacob could have seen his father again. Maybe if he'd known Aaron was The Stranger, if he'd known to wait in Phoenix Drop, Aaron would be alive. He would have had his son to live for.

They can't make themselves stay there once they know the truth. They're not ready. Abby tells Katelyn she'll be back to catch up later, and Jacob tells the Lord he'd like to meet his sisters another time, and with Jacob's quest over they go to hunt the Jury of Nine for Jeffory Goldenheart.