[Fiction] Stormcaster

[keithcurtis]

The recent thread on character backgrounds convinced me to dig up this story I started to flesh out the background of a Fantasy Hero wizard I run. The character is Galen Stormcaster. If anyone reads this and would like to hear more, I'm pretty sure I can find Chapter 2 as well.

Note: You might discern a not-too-subtle reference to a certain collectible card game. People who have downloaded our magic system may be aware that several aspects of that game were converted to Hero for our campaign.

 

 

 

Stormcaster

by Keith Curtis

 

Chapter 1

 

I WAS BORN in a year of fire. That was the year that the goblins came down from the Hollow Hills and set the Dreyban Woods to the torch. I didn't find out for many years that their actions were not in retaliation for anything we had done to them, nor out of desire for territory. Some say that their god impels them, but goblins are seldom moved by religious fervor. I believe they did it for the enjoyment of causing misery to others, or from boredom. I have long since come to understand evil, but I shall never comprehend petty meanness. But I digress.

 

My earliest memories are of my mother pulling me from my cradle (yes, I can remember that far back; it's the later years that trouble me), and running through a smoke-dimmed room. I remember a loud crash as some part of our cottage collapsed, perhaps the roof. My mother shielded me with her body at the cost of her own life. I remember the men of the wood pulling us from the still burning wreckage of our home. It was still night, but the Dreyban woods were lit by a dull red glow that permeated our surroundings and lent a supernatural feel to the night.

 

Many people lost family that night. I later learned that 300 woodfolk were claimed by fire or goblin steel. The men who worked Dreyban Forest were a course and uncultured yet kindly folk, unaccustomed to the arts of war. Although armed with stout axes, they had never used them to hew anything but wood. The Fire Goblins, as we came to call them, met thin resistance. Three times they lit the wood with their black torches and three times the men and women of Dreyban fled.

 

The last time proved the worst. Dreyban had never been one of the thick woodlands like those of Navalorn. It was a small forest, barely yielding the timber to support the families and clans that called it home. I visited it many years later as an old man and found it to be a gray valley choked with scrub and brush. No stick or stone stands to mark my birthplace. But again, I get ahead of myself. It is sometimes a characteristic of the old, when telling a story, to leap from beginning to end and back to the middle with the long perspective of age.

 

At any rate, Dreyban was finished. The survivors fled with their meager belongings, some to the fertile fields of Lord Craider there to labor under the hot sun until their debt of servitude was paid, others to Valkor for much the same fate. I being but an infant was given to a family who had lost a child in the fires. My stepfather was a carpenter, and had in mind to raise me to his trade. He was a talented craftsman, by the name of Galen, and it was his name they gave me, mine being unknown. To this day I have no recollection of the name my mother called me.

 

The next years were happy ones, the longest stretch of contentment I have ever known. Galen had found employ with a noble family named van Quer, and it was in this land I grew like a weed. Seven summers passed while I basked in the kindness of Galen's family. Seven is the age a young man begins to learn something of his father's craft, or he is apprenticed to another. Galen showed me many things he had built and I was fascinated by the thought and planning that went into the great constructions being done by van Quer. I discovered in myself a desire to understand the workings of the world, a thirst for knowledge that would never be quenched. Not until my fortieth year... But again I digress. I promise that from now on, I shell tell this story in the order that it happened, and let darker deeds await their turn.

 

My seventh winter was the winter of the Black Rains. Only Elves, Dwarves and the oldest of men remember it with clarity. Whether a god had become angered or chancing fate played a grim jest none know. But for three weeks the vales of Akanar were washed by rains so heavy that days went by without sight of sun. Crops were ruined, many starved. It was the second great disaster of my young life, and the second time I lost a family.

 

I had been sent by my stepfather to gather some tools that he had left behind at the shop. A set of files for sharpening saw blades as I recall. The way was hilly, but not overly difficult for a young lad. The hardest part was a long stretch of nearly a mile climbing the switch backs of a long ridge that bordered the river valley. The rains had finally let up after many days of downpour and the way was muddy, else I should have left the road and climbed the slope cross country. Galen was angry with me for I had left one of his saws out when the rain had started and it was now covered with rust. He had meant the trip to be a punishment, to teach a dreamy young boy to keep his mind on the job. As it turned out, the task he had set me saved my life. I had barely begun the climb when the sky began to glower once more and thick wet drops began leaving little circles in the still-muddy road. I briefly thought of running back to the worksite, but I was afraid of Galen's ire, should I return without the files. I determined to complete my task no matter the adversity.

 

It was near the top of the ridge, when the rain had increased to a heavy drench, that I heard the sound. To my young ears, it sounded like a low growl, perhaps an animal in the sparse brush alongside the track. The growl grew in volume and depth until it sounded as if a dragon, perhaps the largest dragon in the world, were bellowing out a challenge to the gods. Turning to look behind me, I saw a scene I will never forget. From the cleft in the mountains from whence the Black River sprang, an army of trees was on the march. I soon realized the trees were not moving of their own accord, but were being borne upon the breast of a mighty column of water. Somewhere up in the mountains, a dam, natural or man-made had give way, or perhaps a large levee had eroded, releasing the pent-up waters of the storm. With horror, I saw the work of six years swept away by a flood of dark water. Even from the ridge I could hear the smashing of timbers and the cries of frightened men and women.

 

Within a short time the vale was filled. Where once had stood the ramparts of van Quer's new castle a rushing torrent now held reign. I do not know if I would have been safe up on the ridge or not, but I was not thinking clearly. I ran down the hill, cutting across the road, sliding down the mud toward the only family I had left. My stepmother had been down in the vale working in the kitchens that fed the workers of van Quer; my father had been shaping timbers for the bailey. Both bailey and kitchen were swallowed by the icy flood waters.

 

I was perhaps a dozen yards from the water when I realized my danger. The torrent was ripping and destroying everything in its path and I was powerless to prevent my headlong slide to destruction. I hit the water as fast as if I had been shot by a bow. Fortunately, the current and debris were not as dangerous this high up the ridge. It was still beyond my seven-year-old muscles and I was swept along helplessly. I chanced to catch on to a door that had been torn from van Quer's keep. The door spun and dipped with the current and it was all I could do to hang on as the water carried us down the river valley.

 

I clung to that door for three days. I had never learned to swim, so even after the rains lessened and I could see the far shores of the swollen river, I was unable to strike out for the safety of land. I rode the door until I saw the splashing and dipping of water over submerged rocks. The rapids quickly separated me from my float and tossed me about like a child's rag doll. With my nose and mouth choked with ice water I was vaguely aware of being pitched out into empty air. The river had gone over a fall and I had gone with it. I struck the surface of water below and lost consciousness.

 

I slept for another three days. That is what the old woman told me when I awoke. I was lying upon a rude cot in what my fevered dreams had taken to be a ship, but what I know realized to be a wagon. The wagon was large and enclosed and obviously used as a living area. There were pots and pans neatly stowed, trunks for clothing and a wide variety of odd implements and paraphernalia that I didn't recognize

 

The old woman was frightfully ugly (I wonder, would I think so today?) but her manner was kindly. She spoke with an odd rustic accent. She said her name was Mara, and that she had found me at the edge of the river and had at first taken me for dead. It was not until she actually touched me and felt my fever-hot flesh that she realized my condition. She had pulled me from the waters edge and bundled me in blankets, treating me with a variety of herbs and poultices until the fever broke and it looked as if I would live. She nursed me with a gruff but gentle manner throughout that winter. I owe her my life many times over and would give much to see her again.

 

After I told her my story, she insisted that I call her Grandmother Mara, and indeed she treated me as if I were her very own flesh and blood. Having no other family or home, I threw my lot in with her. Although she was kind, those were lonely years. Grandmother Mara was a bit of an odd one. She was what some call a hedge-witch. She knew no true magic, but had a natural knack for herb-lore and a knowledge of the trappings of the Art that could easily fool the inexperienced eye. The old woman also had a way with animals that I have rarely seen. She could gain their trust and acceptance with great ease, calming them with a few simple words. She could not precisely speak to them, but they understood her and generally complied with her wishes. Her horse for instance, needed no guidance to pull her cart from town to town. She earned her living performing cures, selling minor potions and concoctions to people in the towns we passed through, and selling rare and difficult-to-obtain herbs to the few true magicians she knew. We traveled much and rarely visited any place twice. It is perhaps because of this time that I have always found it difficult to make friends.

 

I stayed with Mara for three years. During that time she gave me an education in herb-lore and a respect for the power of nature. She also awakened in me a feeling that there was a vast body of secret knowledge that might be drawn upon if one but knew the right questions to ask. I didn't know it then, but what I was longing for was Magic. I had been a victim of the natural world my whole life, and I had a deep desire to control it and use it for my own purposes. Of course, an eleven-year-old boy would not put it in such terms, but I needed a sense of potency.

 

It was on my eleventh birthday (I have always celebrated it on Midsummer's Day, of course I do not know the day or hour of my nativity) that events came to pass that eventually forced Grandmother Mara to end our relationship. The day started out as any other, we had arrived at a small town far southwest of Akanar. The old herb-woman had made contact with a conjurer by the name of Nathros the Far-Seeing. He had gotten this name from his ability to tell fortunes and pronounce dooms before they occurred. He was round man with a jovial face and bright eye. I was fascinated by him as I had been by any magician Mara dealt with, but she never let me speak with them. This time was an exception.

 

Mara was on good terms with Nathros and as a birthday present, had arranged for me to have a card reading, this being one of the tools the magician used for divining the future. We sat down in a crowded inn common room at a small table near the fire. I remember that evening distinctly, with sight so clear that with my eyes closed I am almost transported there, over sixty years later.

 

Nathros gave me a searching look before he produced his cards. He almost put them away, but glancing at Mara, sighed and began shuffling them. He caught me in his gaze and said, "Boy, the things I tell you tonight can be interpreted in many ways. The images on the card faces are not of gods or mortals. Neither are they places in the waking world. They are symbols, and thus they are enduring metaphors for our existence. Do you understand?"

"No," I replied.

He barked out a laugh then, saying, "Well-spoken, lad. Most people just nod and want you to get on with telling them when they shall become rich or how many children they will beget. You're honest, that will serve you well in this life."

He ceased shuffling the cards and indicated for me to cut them. I nearly jumped from my chair at the touch of them, for the dry leathery surfaces had the feel of life to them, like touching an animal. Fixing me again with his arresting gaze, Nathros drew and turned the first card.

The picture was of a deep woodland with yellow sunlight breaking through the dense canopy. "Forest," he said. "This indicates growth from decay, rebirth and the natural world. You are likely born of the forest, and it is with the growing world that you find the greatest solace," He hesitated a moment. "It is one more thing. It is also the symbol for the Art of Green Magic. "

A few patrons had noticed Nathros dealing the cards and nervously drifted away. Magic does not fascinate some people, the unknown being synonymous with the feared.

Nathros continued with the next card. This was of a mighty red-hued mountain peak with sharply carved faces. It was dealt upside-down. "Mountain. Inverted," said Nathros. "The Mountain is the symbol of fire and stone. It is chaos, war and destruction as well. It is the color of dragons, orcs and goblins. Its inverted status indicates its transcendence over your first card. From this I interpret that your homeland was destroyed by fire. Judging by your age and accent, I place this to be Dreyban Wood, torched by goblins these eleven years past."

The tables around us were deserted now and the fire seemed uncomfortably close. The innkeeper had put out a few of the lamps, and Nathros' face was underlit by the flickering red light from the hearth.

"One more thing it is also," he said with a queer look, "The mountain is the symbol of Red Magic. Such a drawing is very unusual. Perhaps this is best finished another time..."

But Mara would not let him stop, reminding him that to be accurate, a reading must be done at one sitting. He looked a bit ruffled at this, and Mara realized that she was telling a wizard how to cast. Although she cast her eyes downward in apology, she would not let him put away the cards.

"Very well," he relented, "but take heed both of you, sometimes a telling can tell you more than you wish to know." He relaxed a bit. "Ah well, the first two cards have but told his life, it could be coincidence. There is no reason to think..."

He stopped speaking in mid sentence. The card he had turned over showed a lush forested island rising from a sea of deep azure. The card had slipped from his hand during the deal and lay over the previous two, partially obscuring each.

"Island Transcendent," he choked out in an odd voice. He didn't speak for several moments, and the firelight seemed to make his face twitch and jump. "The island is, of course, the symbol of water. It also represents air, weather and the ephemeral constructs of the mind. This could simply be representative of your rebirth into a new life by water. It could also represent a desire to control or counter the first two by the power of the mind." He hesitated again, this time it did not appear as if he would speak again. Finally, I broke the silence.

"It symbolizes Blue Magic," I said.

His hand reached out and caught me , but the grip of his eyes was far stronger. "How do you know that?" he demanded.

I was scared at this point. Well, terrified actually. Nathros and Mara were both acting strangely, and the sight of the cards filled me with foreboding. The last customers were leaving and the sound of crockery being bussed sounded from the back room. I spoke in answer to his question, "I guessed?"

"You guessed," he said. Again the firelight played tricks with my eyes, making the pictures seem to animate on the faces of the cards.

"Do you know how many colors of magic there are?" he asked. I shook my head. "Five," he stated. "There are over three hundred cards in that deck. The odds of three of the five magics showing on the draw are unlikely in the extreme. One alone indicates aptitude, but three?" He seemed genuinely distressed. Myself, I was puzzling over the word "aptitude." Did he mean I might be able to learn the ways of magery?

"Draw the next card," commanded Mara. She had seemed submissive to Nathros until now, but she sensed something important regarding my fate. Like an animal defending its offspring she was determined to see me through to the end.

With nervous fingers, the fat seer drew the fourth card. It was upright, not inverted, and showed the picture of a smiling man dressed in white robes. In his right hand he held a book, in his left, a lantern.

"The Enlightened Tutor," he breathed. He seemed oddly relieved. "The enlightened tutor represents the teacher, the giver of knowledge and teacher of wisdom."

"Aye, I have taught young Galen well in the ways of herb-lore," began Mara.

"No!" cried Nathros, "You don't understand cartomancy. I have been interpreting these symbols for you as events of his past. That is the standard way to begin a reading. Then you relate past to future as indicated by the symbols. My fear for the boy was concern for his well-being, wondering if perhaps he might be the apprentice I have sought for so long. But he will surpass me. I am but a master of a single color," He turned to me, "Galen, you shall be master of at least three, and perhaps white as well, the most lofty and rarefied of arts."

He turned back to Grandmother Mara. "Herb-mistress, he is born to great deeds. Neither you nor I are a fit vessel to teach him. He must make the journey to the Wizard Isles! There he will find his master and there he will learns the Art from those who know it best. He —" Again he stopped. This time all the blood drained from his face leaving it a ghastly white, even in the light of the suddenly-cold fire.

Slowly, all on its own, a fifth card raised from the deck and played itself upon the table. The image was black, a background so intense that I seemed to fall into the card. Upon the field of black was the visage of a horned man, sardonic rictus grin splitting his cadaverous face. In his left hand was a whip, in his right, a bloody sword. But the most arresting feature was his eyes. Like pools of fire, they caught my own, as if this were no picture, but a window, and the eyes on the other side were compelling me, promising everything and nothing in exchange for nothing and everything. The eyes grew until they filled my entire world. I felt myself being consumed by twin circles of cold fire. Slowly, I was losing all sense of self.

The illusion was shattered as Nathros' ham-like arm swept the cards from the table and into the fireplace. The flames immediately leapt and sparked in many-hued tongues. The deck was consumed entirely, but I am convinced to this day I heard mocking laughter echoing from the chimney.

Nathros fled from the inn, with no explanation of the final card. I have never seen him since. Grandmother Mara was troubled and obviously frightened, but not as much as I. She held me through the long night as I cried and shook with the image of those eyes of fire. An image I knew would follow and haunt my dreams till the end of my days. I still see them in my sleep as I saw them throughout thirty years of madness. I shall always see them.

[Play4Keeps]

Re: [Fiction] Stormcaster

 

:jawdrop: :jawdrop:

 

That's SOOOOOO good! Wow!

 

:jawdrop: :jawdrop:

[Vanguard00]

Re: [Fiction] Stormcaster

 

Needs more pictures. And maps.

 

Kidding! Great stuff, Keith.