Mannix

1. Backstory You were born and raised in the village of Annwyn - a small settlement around the quays of Mons’ Island in the Bay of Monsoth.  Like most of the townsfolk, your parents worked as supporting staff to the Palace and Temple for the priests of Mons who controlled the Island.  You, too, worked on the grounds of the estate, helping the lead gardener who’s name was Lowarther.  The priest of Mons always seemed aloof and intimidating to you, and looked down on you and your family - which for a long time seemed natural.

Image: Mannix token.jpg

Because your parents spent long hours laboring, you often found yourself wandering and exploring the island, though you learned quickly not to be caught by the priests, who did not take kindly to roving eyes.  The priests often talked about escaping death, and you always thought that this was their best quality, even if you didn’t see the products of their labors.  You interpreted that to mean they helped the sick and old, who came with some regularity to the island in search of a healing well.

While still young, a friend of yours - a young girl named Klav - in the village took ill, and was close to death.  The priests seemed uninterested with her illness, and so you determined to seek out the healing well yourself.  Knowing that it was not out in the grounds or the gardens, you snuck into the temple itself, and reasoned that it must be deep in the bowels of the structure.  For days you searched out secret passages and stairways, always avoiding detection, until finally you found a deep circular basement room with and earthen floor,that contained a doorway mounded over with earth.  At the entrance into the space there was a huge stone table that held three objects on it: a golden disk, a Bone Flute, and an obsidian blade.  The flute caught your eye, but then you saw the doorway.  It seemed to lead down further into the ground, but the shadows within it seemed oddly dark and impenetrable.  Hearing voices coming behind you, and hid behind a screen, and watched with horror as Klav was brought into the room, wrapped in a sheet, and placed by priests on the cold floor in front of the doorway.  The priest incanted a ritual, offering the girl’s life to the dead, addressing the doorway.  You could see that Klav was still breathing, but the priests seemed uninterested in saving her, and waited until she breathed no more.  Fearing detection you fled lest your tears gave you away.

After that you never trusted the priests, and the thought of what was through that doorway terrified you.  You feared death and the dead, and had nightmares about hands reaching out of the ground to pull you into death.  Still you worked in the gardens and Lowarther, and he seemed to believe that the earth held gifts, not fear.  Sometimes as you worked he would stop, and say things like “Listen to the voices on wind - there’s more to this world than meets the eye”, and you would think of the flute.

After several years your parents took ill as well.  You asked priests for help, and they seemed uninterested and dismissive.  Finally, you had the idea that the flute might do something, and you snuck back down the chamber, stealing it, and bringing to your home.  You had carved similar instruments since, and had become passable as a player, but as you played this to you parents you were amazed by the beauty of the sound.  Though they had been in immense pain, the flute’s song seemed to ease their suffering.  You played for them over the course of three days and three nights, and they died together, holding hands, in relative comfort, which you attributed to the flute’s music.

Still you heard that the priests were looking for a thief, and leaving your parents, you snuck about a boat heading across the bay to Monsoth.

Upon your arrival you were amazed by the sheer number of people.  You hid in the alleys, and begged and stole what you needed to to get by.  In the center of town between the three hills that made up the city you would peer into the sacred Grove, walled in by a high mound of earth.  It felt both threatening and exhilarating, and felt somehow familiar.  One day you saw a young woman, about your age, coming out of the grove.  This was not unusual per se, but the confidence with which she exited was.  You decided to follow her, and after a few days of nervousness, you introduced yourself.  She seemed taken with you, and for a few months, you had a friend - the first time someone felt like family since you left the island.  You found that Kerenja brought a sense of peace to you, and she said that your parents were still watching over you, and that as a gardener, you should have learned that: she said that birth comes from death, and vice versa, that all things are circles.

You found out that she went into the grove to garden and maintain the space, and she did not control nature as the priests had insisted, but that the key was a finding of balance.

One day, she met up with you with a long object wrapped in cloth.  She took you into the grove, and unwrapped a longsword, which she told you was a family heirloom - though you had never heard her speak of her family, which until this point you had never thought odd - there were so many other things to talk about!

She gave you the sword: its blade was inscribed with decorative swirling lines of bronze, and a worn wooden handle, and a green stone in the pommel and she said that it’s name was Gale.  She asked you to take care of it, and when pressed she said she didn’t want to talk about it.  The next day she was nowhere to be found.

For years since you’ve lived and worked in the city as a body-guard, though you haven’t let others see Gale.  You will go into the grove at times - which has started to seem larger to you than it should given the space it takes up on the outside - and play the flute.  You’ve thought that you feel a connection to something, and remember knights that guarded the Temple and Palace having taken an oath to protect the people of Mons.  You feel as though you are coming to take a similar oath, based on the memory of Kerenja, whom you see in many faces, and feel, now, that though she is not physically present, she is with you all the time, and that brings you a degree of happiness.

One night at the Twelve Spoked Wheel - one of Monsoth’s inns, you see a familiar face - a young man named Crickett - who worked for a crime organization in town (that you have at times been hired by to help as local muscle), but whom you always felt a kinship to.   You felt that neither of you really fit in as criminals, even if it was a way to get money.  He seemed to be sitting with interesting company, and you sat down at the table…

1. Dreams

   1. Dream from Trenewydh Last night you had a dream.  You found yourself in a clearing in a beautiful night wood with ancient trees.  You stand at one edge in tall grass, with the clearing perhaps fifty feet across, seemingly frozen in moonlight and starlight.  From across the clearing, you see a cloaked figure moving slowly toward you.  She speaks in a voice that is alluring and husky.  You cannot see her face.  She says, “Paladin, you seek a new master.  I come from the darkness with two faces.  Would you consider me?”  She stands silently for a moment, and though you still cannot see her face, you can feel her eyes boring into you.  It doesn’t feel like a threat, but you feel you could not hide anything from her.  It’s both frightening, and freeing.  You sense she smiles, then swirls her cape round her and explodes into a mass of black birds who circle momentarily, then fly off toward the Moon.  In the ensuing silence, you walk forward toward the place in which she stood, and find a giant wooden mask with spreading elk horns, and eyes set with obsidian.  It seems to speak to you in a chanting voice that you don’t understand.  You look into the black stone eyes, and fall through them, waking up suddenly with a feeling of purpose.

   2. Dream at Tawesek Last night as you slept at Tawesek, you dreamt that you again woke in the dark forest, but you had transformed.  Your hands were the hands of a beast with copper talons, and your fingers sank deep into the ground, grasping the earth.  Knights entered the clearing, and though in the moonlight they seemed beautiful, when you looked closer their purity made them ugly - perfection hiding a disease.  You felt yourself driven forward by something powerful - protection and destruction together, built of darkness and the fire that brings warmth and comfort and hope - and you charged the knights on all fours surrounded by a cloud of ravens, crashing head first into them, crushing them, and sending them flying through the air.  Eventually they all lay motionless, and you stood again.  You walked to a dark pool that lay in the center of the clearing, and saw your reflection.  You recognized yourself, and saw the spiraling horns of a mountain ram emerging from your temples.  As you saw the reflection, you felt tremendous power for creation and destruction flow through your muscles, and you fell through the reflection.  You awoke to see the stars crystal clear in the sky, rolled over, and fell back to sleep.

   3. Dream at The Abbot’s Hut In a dream, you find yourself naked by the well in the Derwen grove.  You stretch, and feel your body strong in the moonlight.  Taking a deep breath, you dive into the well, and swim long through water filled tunnels, illuminated by sudden blue sparks, and waves of color as you’ve seen in the ocean on a dark night.  At each tunnel junction, you instinctively pick a way, and eventually, you see a shaft of moonlight streaming down through the water from above.  You swim into a vertical shaft, and swim upwards through the moonlight.  You break the surface, and step out into grass, and the water running off your body shapes itself into your tree armor.  When you look about you, you see that you stand amidst an old battlefield.  The grass is littered with skeletons, still wearing rusting armor, and holding broken swords and spears.  The skeletons are overgrown with ivy, and black and purple flowers reach toward the starlight.  You hear the plants growing over the destruction, and voices on the wind.  A giant shadow lifts up in front of you at the far end of the field, and you kneel down, bowing toward the power it represents.  You feel calm, and awake to find yourself wrapped up in the Abbot’s cottage, just as the dawn light creeps through the open door.

   4. Ancient Tree Note You touch the tree, and feel your burned armor begin to heal, strengthened with life.  You feel a shadow cloak thrown about your shoulders by an unseen hand.  You feel a kinship with the hand, and believe that the person who is reaching out to you is lending you their strength.  They are showing you that you are following the right path.