Post by Will (Arvid/Iados/Bumblebuck) on Feb 8, 2014 13:46:39 GMT -5
Come gather around the fire, my companions, and bring your skins of wine! For a tale will begin this night - an epic tale of my beginnings, and perhaps the beginnings of my end. It is a tale of life and death, fear and suspense, of loves lost and lives discovered. Bank the logs and let the flames lay lower, for tonight’s part of the tale is dark and filled with evil things and the loss of a child’s innocence…..
It begins perhaps a decade ago, as I was but a young stripling of 7 or 8. I was with a group of my friends, perhaps there were 12 of us? Hardly a pack by any means, but I was excited to go hunting with them since they were mostly older members of my tribe and this would be my first time to go on the hunt with them. On this day we ranged far from our tribe’s campsite – farther than normal. Our tribe was a hungry one and growing quickly, and since the winter was descending quickly upon the North the food had become scarcer. In a few days’ time we would be leaving the area and deeper into the Spine of the World to follow the deer as they sought shelter from the oncoming snows. Pursuing a pair of stags along the Surbin, we descended into a draw an there we discovered Elf-sign.
Elves, in that part of the region, weren’t unusual, since there was a large clan of them in the Moonwood, just across the river. It was an unusual find for us, however, since these ruins were clearly ancient, older than the Kingdom of Many-Arrows and predating even the loss of Mithral Hall, by our guesses. Distracted by their beauty and craftsmanship, I became separated by my fellows who continued after the deer with hoots and howling in anticipation of a rich venison dinner. Tracing my hand over the carvings I felt a cold wind bite suddenly at me, cutting through my thick fur and the pelts over my shoulders to settle a chill deep in my bones. Looking around, suddenly conscious of the time and the departure of my hunting party, I realized just how alone I was here among the dead, the sun slowly sinking in the west.
As the shadows cast by the obelisks and headstones lengthened over the cairns and crypts, I felt the ground beneath my feet begin to tremble, icy blades of wind cutting through me once again as the unnatural aura of the place began to assail my senses. All around me, hands began to scrabble their way free of the dirt and loud bangs resounded on the barred doors of the barrows and crypts around me. The stench of death wafted out of the opened graves as easily as the undead climbed from them, dirt clinging to their desiccated flesh and rotted clothing as they stumbled and crawled towards me.
I felt fear, I felt panic, and I wanted to run…but my feet wouldn’t move. Inside my head resounded a voice I had never heard before. Deep and resonating, like a true heroic Paladin of old it declared in my head, “Have no fear! They are nothing compared to my power! Power that I have chosen you to wield – you above all others! Now, destroy these abominations! For you do so in my name, though you do not know me yet!”
Unthinkingly I raised my hands over my head. Words in a language I did not know came unbidden to my lips as I slowly turned in circles, the volume of my voice climbing as I spun. As suddenly as I had begun my movements I stopped, my arms dropping and pushing out before me in a wide circle, and in that circle a blinding yellow light blasted, turning the darkened draw as bright as high noon on the ice fields on a clear day. The heat and radiance was intense, and when I awakened it was days later.
Shaking the dirt from my fur, I slowly stood and looked around at the devastation that I dimly remembered beginning a tenday before. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground now, but not enough to hide the charred and blasted corpses of hundreds of bodies; the demolished remains of the crypts and cairns that had stood for centuries but were now but piles of rubble. I couldn’t believe what I had done. Had I really destroyed such a beautiful site? Had I really been the conduit of power that had laid such magnificent buildings low and destroyed so many creatures? I had but one option available to me. I ran.
I searched the area frantically for any sign of my friends and found nothing. Not a scrap of fur, not a severed limb. Overcome by my terror that they had all been lost, I fled the ruins. Had I been paying more attention I might have noticed that as I touched the bodies, they crumbled into dust, or that the stench of Undeath and general feeling of unrest that had permeated the area before was gone. In its place was a sense of calm, of acceptance, as if all the souls of these terrible beings had finally accepted their deaths at the hands of whomever it was that had killed them. The ground had been purified, nay, consecrated and sanctified in such an explosion of divine power that it had scorched the very stones themselves, etching into each crypt and monument, headstone and mausoleum a skeletal hand and arm, holding aloft the scales of Judgement.
The symbol of Kelemvor.
It begins perhaps a decade ago, as I was but a young stripling of 7 or 8. I was with a group of my friends, perhaps there were 12 of us? Hardly a pack by any means, but I was excited to go hunting with them since they were mostly older members of my tribe and this would be my first time to go on the hunt with them. On this day we ranged far from our tribe’s campsite – farther than normal. Our tribe was a hungry one and growing quickly, and since the winter was descending quickly upon the North the food had become scarcer. In a few days’ time we would be leaving the area and deeper into the Spine of the World to follow the deer as they sought shelter from the oncoming snows. Pursuing a pair of stags along the Surbin, we descended into a draw an there we discovered Elf-sign.
Elves, in that part of the region, weren’t unusual, since there was a large clan of them in the Moonwood, just across the river. It was an unusual find for us, however, since these ruins were clearly ancient, older than the Kingdom of Many-Arrows and predating even the loss of Mithral Hall, by our guesses. Distracted by their beauty and craftsmanship, I became separated by my fellows who continued after the deer with hoots and howling in anticipation of a rich venison dinner. Tracing my hand over the carvings I felt a cold wind bite suddenly at me, cutting through my thick fur and the pelts over my shoulders to settle a chill deep in my bones. Looking around, suddenly conscious of the time and the departure of my hunting party, I realized just how alone I was here among the dead, the sun slowly sinking in the west.
As the shadows cast by the obelisks and headstones lengthened over the cairns and crypts, I felt the ground beneath my feet begin to tremble, icy blades of wind cutting through me once again as the unnatural aura of the place began to assail my senses. All around me, hands began to scrabble their way free of the dirt and loud bangs resounded on the barred doors of the barrows and crypts around me. The stench of death wafted out of the opened graves as easily as the undead climbed from them, dirt clinging to their desiccated flesh and rotted clothing as they stumbled and crawled towards me.
I felt fear, I felt panic, and I wanted to run…but my feet wouldn’t move. Inside my head resounded a voice I had never heard before. Deep and resonating, like a true heroic Paladin of old it declared in my head, “Have no fear! They are nothing compared to my power! Power that I have chosen you to wield – you above all others! Now, destroy these abominations! For you do so in my name, though you do not know me yet!”
Unthinkingly I raised my hands over my head. Words in a language I did not know came unbidden to my lips as I slowly turned in circles, the volume of my voice climbing as I spun. As suddenly as I had begun my movements I stopped, my arms dropping and pushing out before me in a wide circle, and in that circle a blinding yellow light blasted, turning the darkened draw as bright as high noon on the ice fields on a clear day. The heat and radiance was intense, and when I awakened it was days later.
Shaking the dirt from my fur, I slowly stood and looked around at the devastation that I dimly remembered beginning a tenday before. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground now, but not enough to hide the charred and blasted corpses of hundreds of bodies; the demolished remains of the crypts and cairns that had stood for centuries but were now but piles of rubble. I couldn’t believe what I had done. Had I really destroyed such a beautiful site? Had I really been the conduit of power that had laid such magnificent buildings low and destroyed so many creatures? I had but one option available to me. I ran.
I searched the area frantically for any sign of my friends and found nothing. Not a scrap of fur, not a severed limb. Overcome by my terror that they had all been lost, I fled the ruins. Had I been paying more attention I might have noticed that as I touched the bodies, they crumbled into dust, or that the stench of Undeath and general feeling of unrest that had permeated the area before was gone. In its place was a sense of calm, of acceptance, as if all the souls of these terrible beings had finally accepted their deaths at the hands of whomever it was that had killed them. The ground had been purified, nay, consecrated and sanctified in such an explosion of divine power that it had scorched the very stones themselves, etching into each crypt and monument, headstone and mausoleum a skeletal hand and arm, holding aloft the scales of Judgement.
The symbol of Kelemvor.