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The Origin of Shaucid and Linaar

From the journal of Brinn Verritus, Grand Historian of Mirth:

Historian's note: This story was pieced together from the nearly incoherent babblings of captured thieves and frightened refugees. As such, it may not be entirely accurate, but it appears to recount the events fairly well.

During the horrors of the Undead Wars, countless thousands lost their lives. At least as many, if not more, fled from their homes to escape the slaughter, becoming refugees in their own land. Most of these refugees perished; despite its name, Mirth is a harsh place for someone not accustomed to the perils. But a few refugees managed to survive...

One such refugee was Shaucid. He was the eldest child, and only son, of farmers in Haunted Hollow. As the Undead armies surrounded Trinst, a frantic order was dispatched by Captain Pedrail for all living near the city to flee for their lives, as the militia could not guarantee their safety from such an attack. As his young sister, Linaar, and his parents fled to the Desert of Mohrum, Shaucid returned to the family farm on the Island of Naince to guard its stockpiles of corn and vowed to send word to them once it was safe to return.

As the armies of Undead swept mercilessly through the hollow, Shaucid lay hidden in a corn siloh listening to the screams of his remaining countrymen being slaughtered reverberate off the metal walls of the siloh. After many months of eating dried kernels the stockpile of corn was nearly depleted, Shaucid's hands were raw from digging in the rocky soil to get to water, and he was delirious from the isolation. It had been several weeks since the armies had left the hollow and traveled across the sea to Fainum but in his delirium he didn't realize they were gone. One day, as he was stumbling in the siloh and fell against its door, pushing it open, he fell to the ground with blinding daylight hitting his sensitive eyes. He slowly recovered his senses and saw the devastation that remained. The fields of corn lay withered and unharvested on the ground, bodies of his countrymen were strewn as far as the eyes could see in pools of dried blood.

In the months that followed, he worked to rebuild the houses, planted new crops of corn, and sent word to the desert that it was safe for his family to return, but no reply ever came.

Shaucid has remained in the hollow and many others have returned from exile. However, there are still remnants of the past that continue to haunt the hollow...

Another such refugee was Linaar, though as her tale unfolds you will see that she may have wished to have perished in the War.

Linaar was an apprentice wizard, and while she could hold her own in a fight, she was certainly no warrior. Linaar and her parents fled into the nearby desert when Captain Pedrail ordered all living near the city to flee for their lives, taking what scant provisions they could with them. But the desert proved to be no safe haven. Their first night in the open sand, a band of scavengers attacked. Linaar's parents were brutally murdered and their provisions were taken. Linaar was dragged to a nearby encampment, where she was taken before one of the Undead Warlords, who employed the scavengers for his own purpose. What happened to her was unspeakable, and over the coming days she prayed for death. But her anguish would not end. Linaar sank into herself, becoming an empty shell of her former beauty. She lost the will to live, and anxiously awaited the day when the Warlord would tire of her and let her die.

One night, three long weeks after her capture, a ferocious sandstorm struck the area, much stronger than the storms that normally frequent the desert. It came suddenly, as these storms sometimes do, and the scavengers in the camp were caught unprepared. Many of the thieves were away at the time, as was the Warlord, and the few that remained fought to save themselves and their animals from the storm.

While their attention was diverted, Linaar slipped from the hut, and disappeared into the blinding sand. As luck would have it, she managed to find the shelter of a rocky overhang and, huddling beneath it, she rode out the storm. When it finally passed the next morning, she found herself alive, but with no food or water, and no idea of where in the vast desert she was.

She stumbled for days, lost and alone, nearly blind from the sun. She managed to survive by eating the smaller insects she could find in the sand, and drinking the juice of cactus berries. It kept her alive, but the grueling desert sun burned her sanity away and Linaar went slowly insane.

Late one evening, Linaar stumbled upon an abandoned temple deep in the desert. She crawled up the stone steps and collapsed into unconsciousness just inside the doorway. Later that night, she was discovered by three sisters. Like Linaar, they had been displaced from Trinst by the war, and they had been using the temple as shelter from the beasts and storms of the desert. They took Linaar in and cared for her as best they could, and slowly her body recovered from its abuse. For her mind, however, they could do nothing and the madness retained its grip on the poor young girl…

Historian's note: Alas, here the story is incomplete. It is clear from several tales that the three sisters cared for Linaar as if she were one of their own, but I have found no witnesses that can describe what happened after they took her into the depths of the temple. There were no others in the temple with the women and all that is known for certain is that exactly one year to the day after Linaar's escape from the Warlord, she emerged from the temple a changed woman. The tale resumes from this point.

During her stay in the temple, Linaar's physical size and power had grown. She was now taller than a Titan, and she was a powerful wizard and an accomplished fighter, but her insanity gave her a lust for blood like few had ever seen. Her first act, upon returning above ground, was to seek out the Warlord who had abused her. She killed all his underlings as though they were insects and then spent weeks dismembering her former captor. If you have ever heard the screams of an undead soul, you know it can curdle the blood of even the strongest warrior. His anguish rang out over the desert as Linaar took her bloody revenge. Eventually, even the strength of the Undead fails, and the Warlord passed from undeath into oblivion.

Satisfied with her revenge, Linaar left the desert and traveled with the Three Sisters to the Island of Naince and built a refuge there. Many have tried to approach the Temples of Linaar to discover her fate, and the fate of the three sisters, but they are turned back by powerful guardians. I have not visited the temples myself, but there are stories of monstrous spiders, ritual sacrifice and torture… heinous stories indeed. Rumors abound that anyone who strays too closely to the temples falls under the control of Linaar and becomes her Acolyte.

I feel something important is happening on the Island of Naince, and it bears watching in the coming months.

Brinn Verritus Grand Historian of Trinst

Addendum: Brinn's notes end here. It's been told among Bards that the Warlord passed into the Blight and was trapped there for some time. With the aid of Laullor the Unborn he was able to cross once again into this realm but in a new form. Brinn traveled to the Island of Naince to verify these stories but was never heard from again.

Thanks to OldRod for writing most of this tale