Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paka" data-source="post: 1299268" data-attributes="member: 100">Chapter II Jasmine Smith Meets Once Upon a Time I was born and raised in Deepmist and always hated it here. It was like something magical and enchanting was happening here once but now it is all over and not much comes down the highway. My ma is the smith in town. Since the Ghouls took pa, she’s the only one able to make anything really fine but mostly it is all horseshoes and nails. Deepmist is a small town, known nowadays only because it is precisely between two great cities. Deeproot, a broken city known amongst the townsfolk for being populated with liars and cheats, and Ladymist, a glittering magical place known among the townsfolk for being populated with Wizards and fools. Hence the name taking the Deep from Deeproot and the Mist from Ladymist. Us Deepmisters have a saying that Deepmist is named for those two cities because we always get the worst from both. The Widow is old. Old enough so that even the oldest farmer doesn’t know the real meaning of her name. Is she called the Widow because when she’s dangerous like the Black Widow spider? Is it an ironic title because she never married at all? Or is it just the simple answer that some man died, her husband, leaving her a widow? The children speak near the town well in hushed tones of a dead husband and they whisper that he was an aspiring Necromancer from Deeproot. The Widow carries her staff and a tome (said to be her tome of spells) is always in her hood. Children sometimes ask her about these items but when their parents are close their questions are quickly shushed as being rude. Every once in a while some child get’s close to the Widow when parents are out of shushing range, “Widow-lady, why do you carry the book and the staff?” She replies with a wink, “I carry the staff because I need help walking and I carry the book just in case I need to fly.” Old Ulney is heading towards a century of winters and the only information he’ll divulge is that she has years on him, maybe just a handful and maybe decades. He won’t say much more before falling into one of his naps. She can often be seen on the porch of her inn, the Parlor (no doubt named so to play up the Black Widow mystique), rocking on her chair, humming a tune no one can name. The townsfolk ascribe her age to her studying in a Wizard’s College when she was a girl. Seeing how her Inn’s windows and doors are always well locked with magic wards. Others say that it isn’t just magic that keeps her young but the fact that she studied in Ladymist, a city said to have been made by Dragons and populated with their children and kin, full of Wizards and fools. When asked questions about Ladymist she will talk for a time about the city’s fine view and how Lair Sisters silently walking the market in the morning in their dark green habits. But she won’t let slip any real details of what she did there or when she did it. The County Logs only state that the Inn has been in her family for almost nine generations and nothing more. Where her real name would be is only a family sigil, a stallion rampant above an open tome. She likes this mystery, in small towns; she thinks this kind of mystery is healthy if it doesn’t become alienating. Too many townsfolk spend too many a winter’s night sipping her mulled cider and sitting by her fire for there to be any real anger at her oddities and peculiarities. When the Ghouls demanded tribute, she spoke against it but when she was voted down, she kept good and quiet. She piped up again when the Ghouls demanded that the townsfolk give over some children to keep with them as “honored guests.” I was one of those chosen to go ‘cause they were worried about my ma starting a stir. Then one day the strangers came into town, down from Ladymist way, off of the Wedding Highway. The Widow let the strangers stay in her inn when they arrived. She even aided them when they ambushed the Ghouls who entered the town square to take the latest offering to the Ghoul’s monthly toll. Now there are soldiers from Ladymist all over in the town and it is said that the strangers are heralds from a Green Dragon who is claiming dominion over the entire Jade Forest. The Heralds proclaimed a Holy Soldier of Ulula Lord Knight over Deepmist. There are priests of Bahamut, Tiamat and Ulula debating religion in the Parlor in the evenings. It is like things are beginning to happen here again. It is like someone just started to write, “Once upon a time,” and I’m there to see it. I spent my whole life living so long after Happily Ever After that it wasn’t even happy anymore. The new Lord gathered the able-bodied men and women from many of the farms to burn the Ghoul’s bodies. The Green Heralds killed all of them, sent them to the Red Door to get their justice. May they rot there for what they did to my Pa and what they did to my friends and me. When I sleep I can still hear the noises those bastards made when they ate. The Strangers, the Green Heralds, rescued me. Three of them are little men. The Widow told me that the little people, Halflings, live in cities called Shires and houses with round doors that are built into hillsides. The Green Heralds only had one big person with them, a woman in full armor and carrying a hand and a half sword with a two handed grip. I’d never seen a woman as big as my ma or me. She wasn’t scared and wasn’t trying to be a prissy girl either. I saw her fight and I wanted to be her. Her name is M’Randa, Lady M’Randa and she has some Orc blood in her. I didn’t mention it but you can tell if not by her shoulders than by the way some of her teeth stick out of her mouth like boar’s tusks. The Green Heralds are leaving soon, heading south to Deeproot. I’m going with them as Lady M’Randa’s squire. Ma isn’t real happy that I’m going but I think she knows why I have to go. I have a little brother who is old enough to work the billows and learn the trade. She cries when she sees me but she fixed up some armor with green scales to keep me safe. She hugs me so hard I can’t breathe. Word has gone out through town and now I get whispered about as much as the Widow and feel a kinship with the old coot. Maybe some day I’ll own some dusty old inn with a sword over my mantle and people will wonder where I’ve been or what I’ve done. I think I’ll do just like the Widow does, all wry smiles half-answered questions. The morning before we headed out the Widow gave me her staff,” You’ll need it more than me these days. A simple walking stick’ll do fine by me. I’ll have someone find me a nice stick.” The staff has a Dragon taking flight along its half, carved into the wood so that the tail and wings spiral along the haft. I stammered a thank you and finally, I my eyes got glassy at leaving my home. Here was the Widow, the living embodiment of all that’s interesting and mysterious in Deepmist and she’s treating me like a long lost niece. It is as if she felt that same kinship I felt. “It is the staff that was given to Wizard’s apprentices in Ladymist, back in my day. I hope it serves you well. But tell me one thing young lady, why is it you want to go and be squire to this Green Knight, Lady M’Randa?” I sniffed and cleared the tears from my cheeks, “Reckoned it was time to do some flying of my own.”</blockquote>

Verification