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Draegonstorm's Characters: A Series on Profiling: Part 6 - Making Moventius

Updated: Feb 25, 2021


Tonight's profile is very special, as was the person who gave me the inspiration for him. Tonight, I am going to tell you about Moventius (pronounced Moe-ven-chus). Yes, I know... that is an incredible name. This character, however, earned his name, and the way he joined the Draegon family seems more like fiction than reality, but it is a true story. This journey is about one of the people I loved most in this world who left us long before he was supposed to. His name was Kyle.

Normally, I do not reveal the names of those who inspire a character or help create it, but here it is the right thing to do. For you to understand the love for this character and where his wonderful nature and personality come from, you need to know the truth about the man behind his creation. I first met Kyle in an online gaming community, and we quickly became the best of friends. We built an in-game family with others we befriended, and were online pretty much every day, emailing back and forth in game, and just having fun. This came to an end when a handful of rude online players cyber-bullied him to the point he quit playing. The day he left the game, I missed him by one hour. He had written me an email and said goodbye, and that was it. He was gone. But the story does not end there.

For a long time after he left, many of us who had gotten to know him really missed him, and we frequently talked about him and the good times we had all shared with him. Then an event occurred that united us with other people on that same game who also knew the cyber bullies. It was this event that ultimately spread what had happened to Kyle to dozens of other people, and many of them wanted to make right the wrong done to him. The problem was that nobody knew where to find him or how to reach him. This bothered a lot of people, and the questions began to go out about what we all knew about him. Did we have a first name? Yes. Did we have a location geographically? Yes. Did we know anything else about him? As people who had gotten to know him began talking more with each other, we were able to piece his first and last name together, what country and province he lived in, and his age.

Then the real work began. Quite a few of us began looking for him through search engines, trying to reconnect, but for a couple of years, no one had any success. Then, one day, out of sheer luck, we found him. One of our mutual friends found his name in an article online about a horse show, and passed the information on to me. I was able to trace him from there, and one late afternoon, I finally made a very nervous phone call to the friend I thought lost forever. There were a lot of tears and happy exchanges, and that call began a whole new chapter of friendships for him. Those who had helped find him who did not know him finally got to meet him, and this time, it was through Skype. He also returned to the game and took up the mantle as his old character again. What was his character's name? You guessed it.., Moventius.

I would love to say the story was a happy ending, but this one ends very tragically. Kyle had been back with us for almost a year when a devastating event that would change all our lives took place. He loved to ride motorcycles, and one afternoon during a road trip with some of his friends, a tracker trailer hit him. Most of the bones in his body were fractured and there was internal bleeding. He spent the next eighteen months in a coma, and almost that long in a body cast, with surgery after surgery as they rebuilt his broken body. I lost count of how many there were, and the complications that followed. I stayed in touch with his sister, and was the information line between her and all our friends. We held our breaths and waited... and then waited some more. Months came and went, with no sign of change. He was in a level one coma, and it was possible he was not ever coming back. The doctors finally informed his sister that if there was no change after a certain date, they were going to pull him from life support and let nature take its course.

Those days saw a lot of prayer from people who had never lifted a voice to God in their natural lives. There was an online chat room set up for people to go that had a chapel background, and many of us went there together to share our hopes and prayers for his recovery. Those months were long and agonizing, and for a year and a half, we held our breaths and waited. Then one afternoon while his sister was sitting with him, just out of the blue, he moved a finger. It was the first sign of life we had gotten in eighteen months other than a heart beat. Then he moved it again... and then again. Then he woke up screaming.

Kyle's body was wracked with pain when he woke up. The doctors had not had any response from him in so long, they were not giving him pain medication, so when he woke, everything that was damaged rushed at him in a wave of intense pain. They sedated him and I got the incredible news: despite all the odds, he had somehow survived. But now the real work began. He had undergone months of recovery and surgeries to rebuild the damage to his body. Bones had been re-broken and properly set, skin-grafts had been done... and the eighteen months he was in a coma had atrophied all his limbs and spine. When they took him out of the final casts, he was no better off than a paralyzed person.

I remember that first phone call with him. "Kate... I'm no better than a rag doll. God, I can't let you or anyone else see me like this. I'm nothing but bones in skin." I wanted to cry at how sad he sounded, but I encouraged him to keep going. He was going to have to go through lots of physical therapy. He would have to work hard, but he could do it. He had an indomitable spirit. His sister had to sell his remaining bike, and both his horses to get the two of them an apartment where he would be able to go home to after the hospital. She had moved to the area to be with him. Their parents passed a long time ago, so it was only the two of them. She had a fiance as well, but that quickly changed over the amount of time his sister spent with him. The day he was finally released came and he went home with his sister.

That began a very long year for he and his sister both. While he struggled through daily therapy and constant care, she worked two jobs to take care of him. I would frequently talk with he and his sister both, getting updates and encouraging him to keep fighting his way back. He sounded in better spirits and even began playing the game online again for awhile. But the slow recovery and the toll it was taking on his sister weighed too heavy on him, and one afternoon, I logged onto the game to find one final email from him. In his same loving, jovial fashion, he left me a letter telling me to live my life, be happy and find what it was I wanted for myself. Then he said he was sorry, that his sister needed her freedom and he needed peace.

That afternoon, he emptied every bottle he had, laid down as though he was going to sleep, and left this world. His sister found him when she went in to wake him for dinner. There was no emotional drama, no attention-seeking... nothing but a simple decision and a goodbye. I cannot say how many times I wished I had logged in and found that letter when it would have made a difference. Yet, I cannot be angry with him. He went through so much... more than any human should ever have to endure, and he tried to bear it stoically. But it overwhelmed him. In the end, we were left with the memories of a rambunctious, funny, incredibly warm person, whose zest for life echoed in everything he did. His horses, his friends, his smile... there is so much to the person I knew that I cannot even voice here because the years have not diminished the grief I feel over his loss. Moventius is the very embodiment of who he was... his personality, his charm, his incredible selflessness. Moventius was born into Draegonstorm in his memory and through the character, the man will live on forever. ~ RIP Kyle 04/24/86 - 11/25/14 ~


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