Tavin the Half and the Gall of Baere

They say it was in the year 4078, when the Fraternity’s blood ran thin and the goblins were surging like a black tide out of every hole in the world. The Rangers were breaking on the stones — too many young, too few old, and every patrol ending with fewer men than it began.

The Old Bear then was Tavin the Half, born of elvish blood and human stock. Some called him half a man, some called him twice the man of any other, but none denied his ferocity. He bore scars from tusk and claw both, and he had buried too many brothers in shallow graves by lonely rivers.

It was Tavin who left his bow and blade at the edge of the Deepwood and went unarmed to the circle of the White Robes. He did not kneel, as others might. He stood tall, his voice raw with grief and wrath, and demanded:

“You sit in your groves and chant of balance, while goblins devour the children of men. Give us the secrets of their kind, that we may strike them down! Give us the strength, or by the bones of the fallen I’ll tear it from you!”

The White Robes whispered, for never before had one of the Fraternity dared such insolence. Draegol himself, elder among them, warned him:

“What you ask is not gift but gall. To taste it is to drink of Naturia’s anger, and anger once swallowed is never spat out.”

But Tavin would not bend. He drew a knife from his own belt, cut his palm, and let the blood hiss upon their fire.

“If anger is all that remains to us, then anger we shall wield. Give me the gall.”

So they gave him trial. They set before him a cup carved of ashwood, filled not with wine but with sap drawn bitter from the oldest tree of the wild. Tavin drank it to the dregs, and it is said his eyes turned black as coal. For three days and nights he writhed in fever, and the ground where he lay was scorched bare as if fire had kissed it.

On the dawn of the fourth day, he rose, gaunt and hollow-eyed, but when he took bow in hand his arrow flew so sure and so straight it split a crow from the sky. The White Robes bowed their heads.

“So be it,” they said. “The gall is yours. But beware, for bitterness clings.”

Tavin carried it back to the Rangers, and taught them what he had learned — the wrath that hardens the hand, the fury that sharpens the eye. They called it The Bitterness, and from that day to this, no goblin sleeps easy when a Ranger walks abroad.

But there is warning in the tale, too. For the Bitterness is not without price. It cannot be wielded by the greedy, nor the faithless, nor the cruel. Many a Ranger who strayed into evil found the gall turned against him, leaving him hollow, his hand unsteady, his eye dim.

So when the fire burns low and Rangers gather in the shadows, they say:

“Thank Tavin for the gift, but fear the Gall. For it blesses only the just hand — and curses the hand that betrays its brother.”

Pyromancers

The so called Fire Mages of Erenth are also known as the Pyromancers, the Sons of Arecelos, or the Priests of Maegara. Collectively, they refer to themselves as the Infernari. They are wizards operating outside Censure and are thus Hedge Wizards from the point of view of the Dweomersecte, though they belong to a very specific college.

While they do not have access to the same suite of spells that other wizards do, generally voluntarily confining themselves to those based on fire, they are able to cast those limited spells at a much higher degree of facility. They are also believed to be immune to the ravages of all but the hottest fires.

The Pyromancers draw their lineage from Sarseer, Niktalor I, Arecelos I and Vynse of the Dweomersecte. But none of those mighty wizards would have recognized a separate organization of Fire Mages, because it did not yet exist. 

In 4093 the Infernari was officially formed and it's membership split from the Dweomersecte when Peredik the Tall was made Archmage and Lara the Smouldering was ejected from the order. She was first to style herself, the Archflame and named those who defected with her, the Infernari. 

History of Man -- Book 1: Westrun Part 8

Sometimes called the Lost Centuries, the years between 3800ey and 4100ey are filled with fantastical tales of the works of Heimos and his offspring. There are records of battles but the casus belli for each amounts to the offense of one god or goddess against another. There are also strange inversions of cause and effect in which certain of the line of Heimos are claimed to be the parents of ancient tribal heroes of the Nandi, now divinized.

Einil and Ninlee became associated with the men of Sudhall. Einik with Watersedge. Inossa with Rath. Kinurea with Watersedge. Noilo and Ninurto with Menea. Ningula with Balsrest. Utuno with Treft.

Some of the more familiar, and undated, tales from the Lost Centuries include the following:

• Einik, son of Heimos and his brother Utuno fishing in the Inner Sea for a Kraken using the head of a Gorgon as bait. Having hooked the Kraken the two brothers squabbled over who would claim the catch, and coming to blows, lost their catch and net to the sea. 
• Kinurea engaging in a contest of poetry to the death with two ancient dragons.
• Noilo overhearing a prophesy that the gods would be slain and agreeing with Utono to fight against Ningula, whom they hold responsible. 
• Morven, the granddaughter of Heimos, leading an army of the dead against the Decadon while Heimos himself is swallowed by the earth and must battle six titans to escape. 
• Bolid the Brave, (he reimagined as a grandson of Heimos) riding a pegasus into battle against the trio of medusae and tricking Utuno into blinding them so that they turn each other to stone.
• Ren of the Plains (here reimagined as the grandson of Heimos through Ningula) and as penance for the death of his death of his father must race six creatures of fantastic speed. From each of these races he takes a prize and uses them to effect his escape from his other mother's prison.
• When Beddas the diseased kidnaps his grandfather, his own sister tricks Anora (a mortal woman) into seducing him and securing the release of Heimos.

Not all of the three centuries is completely lost to fantasy, however.

Dated at 3990ey, then Archmage Nizarys is said to have impressed the five dragon princes with his command of arcane knowledge, and extracted a promise from them which some call the Accords. Whether this happened or not is still a matter of some debate, but it is far more likely than the tales of the twins Noilo and Ninurto wrestling with a hydra.

Dated at 4004ey, the scrolls of the Belasarian Reforms to the Balduren army were recorded in some detail. The men of that city reorganized themselves from foot soldiers to light cavalry, and tipped the balance of power across the plains from the Goblin Hordes back to humankind. 

Also in 4018ey at the 74th Forgathering of the Fraternity, the Rangers reconstituted some of their numbers and detailed them to the Northern Marches of Wanderhalt, where the goblins were seeking new access to Westrun.

The Books of the Archflames of the Infernari vol. 1

• 4093 Lara the Smouldering was the First Archflame of the Infernari, but she began as an apprentice in the Dweomersecte.

Born to obscurity in the lower city of Peakshadow, Lara rose swiftly to prominence by the brilliance of her mind and an uncanny sensitivity to the elemental force of fire. She was elevated to the position of magister under Archmage Arecelos I, whose unorthodox experiments into the infernal realms she embraced with fervent dedication. Under the tutelage of both Arecelos and his successor Vynse, Lara honed her command of flame until she was said to be impervious to heat and able to shape fire as a sculptor shapes clay.

When first Arecelos and then Vynse were slain -- torn from the world by extraplanar entities during their summoning -- Lara became convinced that they had nearly achieved ultimate dominion over the material world, what she would later call the Prime Ember. Her attempts to continue their work were met with condemnation. Peredik the Tall, elected Archmage in 4093, issued a censure forbidding the Dweomersecte's contact with infernal powers and suppressed Lara’s research.

Rather than recant, Lara renounced the Dweomersecte, declared herself the head of a new school and led a handful of followers into exile. These defectors became the first Infernari, united by their faith in fire as both truth and transcendence. They named her their Archflame.

Lara's charisma and intensity reshaped magical orthodoxy across the Four Lands, and her brief rule laid the foundation of a flame-wrought philosophy that endures to this day. Her later years remain mysterious -- some say she perished in the volcanic collapse of Mount Erenos; others claim to have seen her in the deep Khard of Southrun. Some say she walks the Sea of Glass, ablaze but unburned and identify her as the Amira al Nar -- a minor goddess of that land.

 

Roll 005

3803    Odak

Then came Odak.

The Tandis Lists: List X

The Tandis Lists are the compiled lists of all of the Old Bears since the First Gathering of Rangers in 3278ey. They are kept by Tandis of Peakshadow -- a well-respected historian of the Fraternity.

In the 40th century there was:

4078 Tavin the Half of Saklan who went in among the White Robes and demanded the secrets of the goblinkind. He emerged and sought to teach the Fraternity what he had learned. This power is called the Bitterness and it gives the Ranger a special enmity against the goblin.

A History of the Tribes of Man in Westrun

At the dawn of the 7th Age in the 30th Century, Westrun was home to two distinct subgroups of humans, the Nandi and the Tren. By the end of the 40th Century they had been joined by the Meni and the Fahr. Together these four people groups and their struggles create the Eight Kingdoms of Man in Westrun.

NANDI
The Nandi roamed from the Silverlodes Mountains to the Dagger Sea in tribes. Most of their names are lost to history. Those names that are still familiar -- such as the Nadi, Sahna, Numin, Shina, Anis, Duvi -- come to us as place names. Sak and Rath now give their names to whole kingdoms in the modern era. There are many, many more which have been lost to antiquity.

All of the Nandi were hunters and gatherers who made war with one another continuously. Tribes rose and fell, splintered and merged. Life among them was an ongoing struggle for survival against the unyielding land, the elements, and especially the elder races which still tarried from the previous ages. It was not until the common threat of the Goblinkind, that the Nandi were able to unite and eventually coalesce into states under the Eight Kingdom's Pact.

TREN
While the Nandi were roaming in hundreds of nomadic tribes, the Tren, were another race of so-called civilized men. Once held captive by the Dragon Prince of old, they were eventually entrusted with the matters of their captors and in due time inherited the entire Principality of Treft from its exiled ruler. Though they could not maintain the height of Treft's former glory, they were able to hold the walls of its capital city against those slavering Hordes who would rise against it.

After the Dragon Prince was exiled, the Tren lived under the rule of a long succession of their own unpopular monarchs. A rebellion saw to the death of their last king, Etru III, and the Nine Elders who remained banished the monarchy. In its place they created a system of government in which each property owning inhabitant would be permitted to cast votes in a general assembly. Thus the strange democratic government of that city/state was born. The date of that government's founding is commonly given as 3600EY.

MENI
The year 3413EY saw the settlement of the Meni in Westrun under the leadership of Tal the Just. The Meni were refugees from the principalities that lay across the Dagger Sea. A one hundred year long struggle between two of the more powerful city/states had come to its end with the total defeat of Lanaria. Thousands of Lanarians were slaughtered. Many more were evicted and forced to live as wanderers -- their fields were salted, their noble city destroyed. To this day, many Lanarians still wander the Provinces in caravans with a reputation not altogether wholesome. Others made their way East and South by ship.

Several hundreds of Lanarians heeded the call of Tal -- a lesser son of the old ruling house. Together they migrated across the Dagger Sea and settled on Westrun's shores. Once landfall was made they intermingled with the Nandi they encountered. Their descendants were less nomadic, preferring to settle up and down the coast before eventually spreading inland on the plains. The inland group of Meni founded the kingdom which still bears their name: Menea. Those who spread Southward along the coast eventually divinized Tal their founder. They grew from a monarchy into a theocracy.

FAHR
Many long decades after the settlement of the Nandi, in the year 3300EY the first of the Fahr from Northrun came down and founded Wanderhalt and began to settle on the Southern slopes of Mount Oromir. By 3400ey, Sudhall would be raised and this settlement would eventually grow to become Peakshadow. The Fahr of Sudhall and the Meni moving north from Menea intermingled and eventually give seed to Bolden. The people of Sudhall intermarry with the Nandi of the plains and in time came to see themselves as a different from the Fahr of Northrun. Under the Eight Kingdom's Pact, the massive Northrun holdings of the Jarls of Wanderhalt swear fealty to the Lord of Sudhall and become the Kingdom of Colonia.

The Many Gods of Southrun

The pious pagans of Southrun maintain that two brother gods, Amir and Bhamut, once ruled over Southrun. For six centuries the Brothers held sway over all the Land.

The day came when the Brothers became rivals. For they had a sister named Sekhat, who was greatly desired as a consort by each of them. And the two of them came to blows over which of them would be able to wed her. And the fury of their rivalry caused great tribes and nations to go to war. And it came to pass that Sekhat, who tried to preserve the peace of her brothers, was slain in their conflict. So each looked to the creatures of their domain for wives.

For his part Bhamut took many creatures of the animal world and had his offspring by them. These became beasts of great cunning and strange power. While Amir took mortal women and slew many of them with his seed. But some of his wives survived and produced many offspring for him. All of these offspring were immortal and extremely powerful -- gifted with many of the powers of their sires, but also given to all the failings and passions of their mothers.

Eventually, both Amir and Bhamut grew tired of war (some say they were slain by the machinations of the Dark Elves). They have left the temporal world in the hands of their volatile children and can be seldom bothered to pay attention to the affairs of Erenth, let alone interfere in them. 

The sheer number of their offspring means that every tribe and family has its own preferred god or goddess, with most of the rest being benignly neglected. While they will not sacrifice to the other deities, the Southruner is careful not to blaspheme or disparage them -- for he believes (under the Law Which Cannot Change) that any one who does so will suffer curses for seven generations.

The lists below are far from complete. These are the well-known offspring of the brother gods. In addition to a great number of siblings unrecorded, each of these demigods have further bred with other creatures and mortals, and with each other, giving rise to lesser and least categories of beings with divine blood.

The Lineage of Al Amir

• Djazzar -- The butcher is a particularly bloody and violent culler of life.
• Hadeeqah -- The gardener is known for his love of plant life and green areas.
• Bohairah -- The god of lakes and water. He is responsible for the rise of the oasis and all well-watered areas.
• Jabal -- The master of the mountains is considered to be the keeper of the borders between the Khard and the coastal Sultanates.
• A'lana -- This goddess is considered the messenger of the various gods.
• Naqaasha -- This goddess is capricious and given to strife, anger and conflict.
• Hajaam -- He is a warrior god given to attacking first and maintaining a good offense as the best defense.
• Haraqah -- The burning-one is the keeper and originator of fire.
• Raqasa -- Depicted as a young belly dancer, she is a goddess of fertility, allure and desire.
• Halama -- This goddess is the master of dreams, hope and vision. He is called the Dreamer.
• La'eba -- This god is depicted as a small, naked, and often dirty child. He is the god of merriment.
• Wa'ada -- This goddess is a matronly and wizened woman, austere and grim. She is invoked to bear witness to contracts and agreements.
• Abhara -- The patron of sailors and travelers across the sea.
• Kataba -- The patron of scholars and learned men, Kataba is faceless and usually depicted with ink-stained fingers.
• Rahabba -- The goddess of hospitality and the protector of travelers, pilgrims and nomads.

The Lineage of Al Bhamut

• Asad -- The Lion, god of war, power and savagery.
• Samak -- The Fish, god of contemplation, silence, sea voyagers and armorers.
• Qett -- The Cat, mother goddess and patron of defenders and of children, enemy to Af'aa. She is invoked as a surety for hospitality.
• Dob -- The Bear, god of wrathful vengeance and righteous anger.
• Hesaan -- The Horse, god of strength and nobility
• Af'aa -- The Snake is a being of unparalleled cunning, he is the god of liars and assassins.
• Ta'lab -- The Fox is a creature of great mischief, he is the patron of gamblers and actors.
• Gazal -- The Antelope is the patron of generals and the brave. He is the rival of Asad for the affections of Qett.
• Qerd -- The Monkey is often seen as another incarnation of La'eba and is the god of merriment and of debauchery.
• Kalb -- The Dog is the god of servants and soldiers. He is fiercely loyal and a protector of the weak.

The Books of the Archmagi of the Dweomersecte vol. 5

• 4025 Karil the Mercenary - A half-elven male, Karil was almost as accomplished a swordsman as he was a wizard. Not only was he famous for having participated in over 143 duels by the blade, but he once led a company (while still the Archmage) of fighters in the Taliran River War of 4043. Karil died in the last of his duels, not wisely undertaken by a man of his age.
  
  
• 4052 Arecelos the Firemage - A human male, Arecelos rekindled the unhealthy preoccupation of the Archmagi with the element of fire. He also made common cause with strange beings called the Kossuth and under their tutelage took the study of magical flame to new degrees. His unhealthy preoccupation with these beings became a cautionary tale for all. Arecelos lived out the last years of his life as a withering thrall of one of the Kossuth.
  
  
• 4066 Vynse the Summoner - A human female, Vynse rose to prominence on the ashes of her predecessor. Like Arcelos, Vynse was slain by creatures she sought to control.
  
  
• 4093 Peredik II the Tall -  died when the tower of the Archmage collapsed under the weight of the wealth and artifacts he amassed.