Medhia Nox

[Medhia Nox]

((I have used elements provided in the Sundren Wiki. If I have erred at all in thier use I will gladly change them. Otherwise, here is the story of my character..))

I was born in 1350, the Year of the Morningstar, a largely unremarkable event, in Aquor - a decidedly unremarkable town in the growing lands of Sundren. Aquor is desolate a great deal of the year, given to a summer tourist trade of the well to do from Sundren City. We made due with a summer's market and when that coin failed us we survived off what we could scrape from the ground or fish from Az'Gema Lake. It was peaceful, dull even. More than once during my childhood I marched from the family home determined to set out on an adventurer's quest.

"You're far too young boy, and in your condition, ain't no place far you can stray."


It was true that I was too young. Three times I had set out. At the age of seven, then an entire year had surely matured me sufficiently, and then convinced that I was ready at the ripe age of ten. I never made it beyond the broken fence that marked my father's land. I was born albino, my "condition", and though I am told that sometimes the sun burns the skin, I suffered only from migraines brought on by my eyes sensitivity.


So it was, that I took to spending my days at home in the confines of our lordly estate. So lordly that it consisted of two rooms. My parents at least had privacy while I sat in my bed near the kitchen's hearth reading throughout the night. My father remarked that, along with my wanderlust, it was a dangerous and foolish hobby. Neither of my parents could read, but I had garnered enough pity from some of the vacationers to teach me in between their meal-times and swims in the lake.


I was not a slouch. I went out into the fields at night, or under a heavy cloak and managed my way through the small field. During the summer I would sneak into town and speak with anyone I could find. Soldiers with a few days leave, merchants coming to press their wares amongst the loose purses of the revelers, and the occasional wealthy family simply wasting their time and coin away from the doldrums of their homes.


She never told me her name, but she liked speaking with me. As I grew older I learned that magic hadn't only been in my mother's stories. This woman, she laughed when I asked if she were a witch. "For certain," she replied. I was brave and I did not run. This must have made some impression upon her for she looked me out summer after summer and taught me the fundamentals of her craft.


Upon first learning of these meetings my father forbid them. He worried for me I suppose, but the man was limited in his vision. A mere farmer with no dream beyond the stony fields of his father's home he wanted nothing more from the world than to live and die in one place. I wanted more, and there were many fights between us that ended in swift apologies. The rest of the year, my heart would grow quiet, but I would dream. When the summer returned so too would the woman, the fire within me, and my father's disapproving glare.

[Medhia Nox]

She told me of a man named Mundus. Told me how his great vision broke the mountain, and its sundering became the lands namesake. She told me that every great wizard is driven with such passion. She teased me when she said that a farmer's son could hardly have such vision and she laughed when I promised her that I had. Then she would pass me some small passage for which I would read and memorize through the entire year.

I learned that there was a group identified as "the Hands" in the area of Sundren. One time servants of Mundus who now lead wizards in his place. I found it ironic when I learned how these two "Hands" could find no accord and sundered again what Mundus himself had created. I wrote ineptly in a journal of my youth: "Perhaps it is the nature of things to break apart? Or is greatness signified by a man who can maintain opposing forces within?"


When my mother grew ill and died, my father was lost to despair. So pathetic he had become with grief that it came upon me to run our market in the summers. This left me busy and exhausted and I could not find my mysterious teacher. Three summers faded before she passed my by.


"I have missed you Medhia? Why do you not come to me like you once did?"


I explained about my mother, and my fathers dysphoria and how it had fallen upon me to put food on our table. She seemed so unimpressed that I immediately lost my words. Had she no compassion for my situation? Did she not see that my father needed me?


"The generations shall claim you. I am sorry." She paused, pulling something from a satchel at her waist. "But, just in case."


She left me, and I never saw her again. She did leave one last marvel in her wake. Unlike the small sheafs of vellum she had left in years prior, this time she left behind a tome. A beautiful book bound in black leather and inscribed with symbols. At the time I was ignorant of their meaning, but they were beautiful despite that. I watched her go, never wanting to see her again, when I didn't I instantly regretted my words. In my journal I reminded myself: "Be careful what it is you wish for. Its granting may not be what you thought."

[Medhia Nox]

I spent another two years trying to steal as much time as I could to speak with travelers and learn of the world. I sought out anyone who might be a practitioner of the Art, but there were few, and none were interested when the oddity of my skin tone faded. A handful of drunkards offered tales, but they were embellished with spirits and ale and I could not discern facts from farce. It angered my, my exile from the small intellectual world I had constructed.

It angered me more when I would arrive home to see my father huddled in the corner cradling his pride and a bottle of liquor. He would scream at me for several long minutes about how unfair life had been and how I had broken my mother's heart with my dreams of leaving. He had changed. This otherwise insignificant farmer who sang country songs while he tilled his fields and offered folk wisdom while he sat at the head of his table had not become embittered and cruel. He had become the demon upon my back and I secretly longed to exorcize him from my world.

My precious treasure, my tome, was largely empty. Upon the first few pages were strange symbols and instructions in various languages. There were markings I was sure were arcane written in a delicate, patient script; her script. I spent my free time after my father had fallen into a drunken slumber, doing what little I could to decipher the works.

I would carve markings into the stall and offer up our goods for free to anyone willing to part with their information. I drove us to poverty and we ate little in those last few years. It worked however, and little by little I put together the workings of the magical writings left behind by my long gone benefactor.

My father rarely came home and I was sure he had contracted some disease from a brothel wench. The simple life of the peasant farmer was a lie. There was no humility, no purity in the hard work of a simple man. There was only corruption awaiting him when the fragile world of his construction faded and left him empty.

"I'm leaving." He stared up at me from the floor as I spoke. There was malice in his cold eyes. His face was haggard and torn up by unkind years. A rot had eaten the mind of the man of my childhood.

"You're young and stupid and cursed with your skin. The sun'll burn out your eyes before a weeks out."

There was enough to remind me of those days when I had marched from the house, a brave little man setting out for adventure. In those days heath and lavender grew along the broken fence posts and the fields shone gold with wheat in the autumn. Now the field was fallow and the yard was thick with tall grasses and weeds. My mother had always called me back to the home, back to reason. I could catch the scent of rhubarb pie and come rushing back, my alabaster skin flush. She would catch me in her arms and we would head inside and I'd forget all about adventure.

My mother was dead and there had been no pies in more than half a decade. Just the rot and stink of a failing man at the end of his days. I stared down at him. I had no love for him any longer. There was a world beyond the broken fence. A world filled with magic, and glory, and adventure. The world of my mysterious benefactor.

I closed the door and ran. I ran, not toward memories of pies and kisses, but the faint scent of knowledge upon the air and the mysterious woman who was the mother of the passions which drove me into the darkness and a future, uncertain.

[Medhia Nox]

"Where are we captain?" Asked a greasy haired boy with great red pimples covering his face.

"We're in Chessenta. We've got work here. One of the local nobles wants us to put an end to a problem before it arrises. It's good pay even if the work isn't pretty." Captain Jonar was a tall, stoic man who dressed at all times in the panoply of war. The man spoke with a formal, unwavering tone that brooked no further questioning.

Medhia listened quietly by a campfire he had built separate from his fellow campaigners. The Black Pillory was the captain's name of choice for his little war-band. Composed largely of down on their luck peasantry that had taken up with the captain, a seasoned war veteran reportedly from Cormyr, they had become accomplished in their own right after several years of mercenary life.

The camp was small. Twelve spartan tents, patchworked together with scraps of leather, sat around four large fires each in their own stage of the evening's meal of burnt rabbit and stale bread moistened in ale. Beyond that was the captain's tent. Larger, but no more lavish, than his soldiers. Medhia's small one man sat in its shadow.

"Eh, Medhia, you're the captain's boy. What's it we doing 'ere fer real?" A fat, scarred face with a crooked toothed grin called out to him from near where the horses were tethered.

"I don't know Nesh, and don't call me that."

"Oh, c'mon Medhia. Is only a bit of fun. Yer the only one as can read besides the captain. You gotta keep us informed is all."

"You question his decisions." Medhia let the statement hang in the air between them. Nesh was simple minded, honest, and great with an axe. He knew well enough that the man was fiercely loyal to Jonar, but as Nesh himself had said. "Is only a bit of fun."

"Alright, alright I sees where this is going. Now I ain't questioning nothing. Just curious ye see."

Medhia let out a sigh. Nesh was one of the few in the The Black Pillory that had offered him any sort of acceptance. "Honestly Nesh, I don't know any more than you do about where we're heading or what we're doing."

"Wassat yer looking at?" Nesh seemed to forget things easy. He was quick to find interest in new topics well before the old one had run its course. It suited Medhia fine.

"It's a book of wizardry Nesh," said Medhia.

"Oh, a wizard is it? I knowed a wizard once. Last one we 'ad, it was before you came 'course. The captain kept him close too, but he were put down in a battle with an Amnish trade caravan," said Nesh.

"I'm no wizard Nesh, not yet at any rate. What did you do with his things?" said Medhia.

[Medhia Nox]

"Well, the men split up 'is stuff. Ain't like he were taking it with him."

"True enough. Did he have a book like this Nesh?" Medhia looked up for the first time. His rose colored pupils caught the firelight and burned crimson. Nesh shifted uncomfortable under the gaze.

"I think so. Hevery 'as I think." said Nesh.

"Thank you Nesh." Medhia's eyes went to the pimple faced Hevery who was putting away supplies. He was younger than Medhia, but had been with the company longer. The warmth of the fire made Medhia's face flush as he sat in thought. The fire turned to embers after some hours and Medhia stared into the inky blackness until he fell asleep with his head upon his knees.

-----

The Chessenta campaign had landed them in the middle of a full on border war and already a third of the men had fallen. Among them was the young Hevery. Medhia had brought him back to the camp after The Black Pillor had been scattered throughout the battlefield. He told them how they were both separated from the bulk of their force and Hevery had received the wounds of many blades before Medhia could intervene.

The possessions of the dead were traded amongst the remaining soldiery. Medhia was sure to retrieve the books that Hevery had kept from him. The two had argued in the weeks following Medhia's discovery of the tomes. Hevery was not willing to part with them. He had no clue as to their value, but he was spiteful enough to know that if Medhia wanted them then he wanted to keep them for himself.

Reading through them proved almost as fruitless as it might have been for the greasy faced horse boy. They were not as well written and the symbolism was crude. It was done in several languages leaving whole sections Medhia could not decipher. He soon became disappointed with his newly acquired treasures.

"Thank you for your visit. I'll take your words into advisement," said Captain Jonar. Medhia looked up to see a figure leaving the captain's tent. It was a slight figure, a woman? She turned for a moment toward Medhia. Though he could only make out a ghostly visage of her face it sent shivers through him. She turned away quickly and disappeared through the camp.

"Who was that Captain?" asked Medhia.

Captain Jonar stood between the flaps of the tent watching the female figure disappear. He turned when Medhia called out to him a second time. Medhia had not seen such a grave face on the man before. Medhia stood and walked over to him.

"Come inside Medhia. We've some things to discuss."

Medhia glanced out into the darkness. Who was the woman and why did she seem so familiar? He thought of his mother and better days. She always smiled at him like he was her greatest treasure. As mothers do, she had a way of making any day a better one with a joke, or a tickle, or hug. Before him however was nothing but shadows from the camp-fires dancing along the tents. Phantoms of The Black Pillory soldiers who had died and haunted their memories. Somewhere amongst them was Hevery's accusing shade. Captain Jonar had already headed inside. Medhia turned and slipped into the tent.