Surprise! Paladin

[lydamorehouse]

Okay, there's the elf! Look away, if you are not so inclined. The adventure continues to unveil it's party member's deep, dark secrets.... 


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January 18

Brendelfort, Kingdom of Shira

My dearest sister, Ave,

You will not believe this.

All this time… the whole time that I have walked as a fellow traveler among The Caravan, I have been in the presence of a paladin who follows the Oath of the Ancients. 

Let me begin at the beginning, so that you may feel the same shock as I did. Varneolwa--or Brown Branch, as my companions call him--had, as you may recall, agreed to sell out his master, Bedeview the Black. Armed with the location of Black’s encampment and the blessings of the city’s Captain of the Guard, we set out to investigate. 

I suspect most of my companions and I were in silent agreement that Bedeview the Black is quite likely a foe beyond our capabilities. Thus, it was with grim determination that we strode out towards what we imagined to be our doom. 

This part of the country, Ave, is populated with low, undulating hills. It is not uncommon to find yourself winding your way through the narrow valley pathways between tree-covered hillsides, like a river. Shadows of the trees are deep and haunting, and the land rises around you like great waves of stone and wood.  Perhaps, this is why the fair folk are so covetous of this region and hope to claim it as their own. It likely reminds them of home. My dim memories of the FeyWilds that you and I traveled with mother are of eerie landscapes not unlike this, with moss covered boulders and the vibrant green of bracken and fern that I have seen in so very few other places. Dim echoes of that ancient wildness can be felt in these lands. 

Grigor, our monk, appointed himself our scout, much, it turned out, to his detriment. It may be difficult to imagine such a seasoned and perceptive person might suddenly find himself in the middle of a horde of mutated goblins, but as I have noted these valleys are deep and dark and twisted, almost canyon-like, in the way in which they funnel travelers in a certain direction. The goblin fiends used the terrain to their advantage and were on top of Grigor before the rest of The Caravan even knew he had been ambushed. 

Though he did nearly lose his life in the ensuing battle, we fortunately heard Grigor’s pained cries at a distance and rushed to his aid. 

Again, my memory of the battle itself becomes murky and lost to the blood rage, but… strange things continue to happen to me when I fight. I would swear to you, as ridiculous as it seems, I was able to summon pixies from the FeyWild itself. Stranger still, these pixies would then explode and cause damage to anyone nearby. My rage is such that I am nearly mindless when taken over by it, but, normally, it comes with its own sort of danger sense.  Because of this, I have a memory of being injured myself by one of these strangely combustive fairy folk. 

Am I so conflicted by my own heritage that my anger can rip the very fabric of the universe? And drag from it unwilling Fey victims, literally rending them to smithereens by the force of own self-loathing?

A chilling thought.

I do wonder what my companions make of these strange new occurrences. 

Especially the paladin. But more on that in a moment.

Despite Grigor’s near death experience and the fact that these mutated goblins were able to inflict some strange form of mental injury that my blood rage could not lessen the impact of, we took only a short rest before pressing onwards to Bedeview the Black’s abode. 

I will tell you, Ave, while resting on the incline of this hillside, I was in some despair of our ability to withstand even a minor tangle with Black and his blink dogs.  As Papa Bernard skinned the black bears that had, apparently, come to the aid of the goblins, I told my companions that, should it come to it and I found myself the last one standing before this FeyWild knight, I would trade the Queen’s love token, the ring I wear, for their lives. I have the sort of visage and demeanor these days, dear sister, that makes these sorts of declarations seem threatening, but it was intended as a promise. I would surrender the ring if it would save my companions their lives.

It never came to that, as fortune--or perhaps the will of the Ancient Ones--would have it.

I am not one for gods, Ave, as you well know. I prefer to imagine that fate is a thing a warrior forges for themselves with muscle and steel. However, it is clear that  Zavala and Theophina’s goddess, Avandra, moves pieces on the chess board of my life, and now… 

Now I must contend with gods older than the Elven race itself.

We knew that we had come to Black’s hideout when that creeping sensation came over us as we stood atop a particular mound of earth. You remember this sensation, Ave. We have felt it together, you and I. It’s the one where all of a sudden your skin prickles. Your senses heighten and you notice that you’re alone, in a clearing, standing upon a hill covered in clover the color of emeralds, white and red spotted mushroom caps sprouting like tiny hats in a circle at your feet, and those strange juts of standing rocks, craggy and old--so very old--that seem… alive, watching you.

Yes. We were atop a faerie hill.

And, foolish though we all knew it was, we planned to enter it. 

There is something about passing into the earth, over a living threshold that feels… dangerous, as though you are making a conscious choice to enter darkness, and leave behind the light of the living. This sensation is ten times worse when you know you’re entering a place claimed by the Fey.

I fully expected to come out to discover some thousands of years had passed.

Or… more likely, to never emerge again.

My companions and I pressed bravely onward, however. The first den we entered belonged to the blink dogs. I had been under a misapprehension that Black might have one or two loyal blink dogs at his side, but we stumbled into a full pack of eight or more of these monstrous animals. Seeing their slobbering mouths and those tell-tale elongated and pointed ears, I girded my loins, thinking that, perhaps, this was where I would die.

That is when Papa Bernard revealed his true nature.

This man… I mistook his antlers and furs for something far more common, a simple Druid. I can look back and say that I knew that there was something primal about Papa’s bearing, but I would be lying if I said that I suspected this goofy, puppy-like fellow to be a holy warrior called in the service of gods that have no names because they are prehistoric and unknowable.

When Papa Bernard held aloft his holy symbol and spoke… Ave, I felt his words not just in my bones, but in my very marrow. Even on the cusp of the rage as I was, it shook me. No, more than that, it felt as though the earth beneath my feet heaved and split and out of it rose something terrifyingly primordial… in the shape of Papa Bernard.

Like the other fey creatures in the den, I was cowed and quivering, or would have been if Papa Bernard were not my ally and my rage not, in its own way, so fathomless and unintelligible. 

It is in a daze that the rest of the events follow. 

I have a sense that we formed a mighty phalanx of mutual aid and fought more of these creatures twisted by the infernal experiments of Bedeview the Black. Likewise, I remember we uncovered papers and alchemical texts and herbs, all of which we gathered in the room where a faerie gate stood. But much like Bedeview himself, we chose to beat a hasty retreat to regroup. We left behind a token effort to forestall reentry from the gate with cold iron filings and booby traps… but, as important as all that is, it is not the thing that occupies most of my thoughts as I sit here in the familiar main room of the Sloshing Boot, while my companions sleep. 

What do I do now, Ave? 

In the countless fantasies I’ve entertained of fully embracing my own Fey ancestry, I never factored in a paladin. Period. Much less a paladin of the Ancients. 

In sudden and great consternation, I remain

Your wayward  brother,

Idriyl