Forsaken Tales: Cirdan Llyr

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"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light." - Dylan Thomas

CIRDAN LLYR

Birth: Tor, 1297

Description:

Cirdan is an older gentleman, closing in on 50 seasons young. His hair his graying and his eyes are a blue like a speckled robin egg. He stands of an average height and weight, and doesn't indulge in excessive eating or drinking. He has burn scars on his hands as if working with metal or a hot forge is commonplace, and some splash back has hit his hands here and there. His face is starting to crack and show aging wrinkles, and they become more pronounced when he smiles or is clean shaven.

Equipment:

Studded Leather, Simple Robes, Cloth Gloves, Eastern Baronies Boots, Longsword (x2), Mining Pick, Smithing Hammer, Tinker's Tool Kit, Tongs.

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Appearance:

Age: 47
Height: 6'
Weight: 170 lbs
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Gray
Skin: Pale but Sun Kissed
Handedness: Left
Posture: Upright and Rigid

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1313:

I watched her from the window of my cold spartan room as I awaited my father to walk home every day. She would filch for coin and food every waking minute of the day till the Flame met the horizon, this husk of a woman with legs mangled and battered dangling behind her as she pulled herself with hand and elbow down the cobbled streets. I took pity on her, but I also fear her. I feared that in old age, I too would be in such a manner if this tale known as life led me down an unfortunate path such as her; that her mangled body and scratching voice marked a sign of the quality of her soul. I believe many who looked on and passed her without gifting a day’s boon felt the very same.

She grabbed a man’s cloak of Republic Red, and sang jubilous praise of Decus and the alms he’d wish his holy soldiers gift. He rebuked her, as they did many others in these lands. He kicked and beat her as I watched from my window. She invoked His name not out of service and faith, but out of opportunity and gain. From my birds eye view above it all, I could see. In the muddy streets, the Templar did too, and he beat her for it. Cursed her and took his wrath out upon her mangled form, saying it was the will of God that she continue this path. A wretched Westerner like the rest. He did not know this to be his last act, and he spent it beating an old woman in the name of the Divine Archangel. I pray too in mine, I do something more benevolent.

A woman stepped into the view of my window sill. She wore robes of black with swirls of sanguine. A shriek in tongues I'd not heard before filled the air as she touched the Templar in despair. His life left him there. She brought upon her words death, but with them too, the renewal of life. The pauper begged as she watched the Republic Cloak land to the cobbles, fixed to a frame that bore no flesh. She begged the robed woman in an old way I’d not before seen as tears ran down her cheeks. I mistook them for the fear I bore, as she tugged at her sanguine sheets. With ashen fingers the woman stroked the pauper’s spine, and with but a few words, her stride long robbed of her was fine.

I hid beneath my bed till my father arrived. Little did I know that every old woman that night would die.

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1314:

He sat on a throne of wooden logs, stacked in intersecting fashion with every row that bore the weight of his armored frame. Ten stacks high it climbed towards the heavens, enough to feed the Flames that would take him, both in the figurative and physical aspects of this final and symbolic act. An iron surcoat of interwoven folds covered his silent chest, an adornment he had not worn since I called him father and could conjure a distant memory of him. What was a brother to some and a father to me now became no more than a possession ill wanted and just as quickly discarded.

His face was no longer his own, and I did not need to remove the oil drenched cloth that prostrate itself over his once kind and familiar features to know what I would look upon was not my father, but something else entirely that claimed his mortal form and brought ruin to its once human frame. I would no longer be gifted the warmth of his embrace. He would no longer smile at the drawings I would make. His scolding tongue at my misbehavior would never reach my ears. His friends would never witness the bellows of his laughter, or the shrewdness of his wit. We would only come to remember the disease that made him sick.

I wished for my childhood once more. That this was but a dream that began to taste of ash and smoke. That he would shake me awake and I’d find myself no longer alone. That he’d embrace me once more and I’d know the sting of his whiskers at my cheek, and the musky scent of his sweat. The calming tone in which he spoke to me, that put my heart at rest.

Although I would look to many, to fill the void left that day, in twilight I know now this: they never intended the best for me like he so did, before dying that fateful day.

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1306:

Her walls climbed ever so high, vigilant over her citizenry and those devote. It was the heart of the Republic, and it was home. The brick laid streets gave flow to the people, the blood of her marvelous stone husk. She was an entity in herself, and her life may have stemmed from her citizens, but the essence of her soul came from His credo to humanity. I do not doubt when I reflect on Tor, my tales of her are an anomaly to those who witness her today.

His duties had swept him away to the West, away from the garrison-like accommodations I’d grown to know in my childhood. His wounds from insurrectionists in the West fifteen years prior had made him ineligible for service on the frontlines, and thus he was forced into the backrooms of storehouses and bulkheads, cataloging and maintaining the surplus of Legion supplies. It offered some in the way of boons, for if he were to embed with the legionnaires in the phalanx, I would not be able to accompany him.

I left her walls in my youth for the last time, following in the footfalls my father left in the muddy road that stretched far beyond the eye could see outside her mighty gates. I remember tracing his step, stomping in the muddy holes of his much larger boots left in the road as I followed suit. I remember thinking to myself how it must be exciting to be a legionnaire, to part from the bosom of Tor herself, to defend her people and His holy proclamations. I remember being proud of my father. I remember wanting to be like him, wound and all. He would walk with a gait in his stride from his injury, and I would mock it in admiration, trying to emulate the man he was, and the man I wished to become.

I hope that one day, I can trace back those steps of his.

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1318:

The air bore with it a stench of charred flesh, and swirled within my mind if I were not to answer true, I’d be yet another to thicken the pungent aroma that stuck to the air like a maggot engorging on a festering wound. They dragged us all out of the cart, donned in black robes adorned with plums of feathers no doubt plucked from the corpses of crows. We shouted through muffled lips, gagged and lined up beside the carriage we rode that took us down a path we had not figured would be of our undoing. A woman beside me, clutched an idol of Him, rubbing it between her fingers as they clenched to it with a white knuckled grip. They smote her into ruin. I thought my last breaths would be ones choking upon her now ashen wisps.

They search us for any effigies, and markings that would denote us as more than mere peasantry beneath the Red banners of the Republic. Those that did, ran with red. Those that didn’t were dragged away instead. They battered and beat us, demanded of us answers to questions we did not comprehend. Cursed and spit at us, struck us with clench fists and open forceful hands. The irony of their acts were not wasted on me. I let out a laughter, as I knew it well to be my last. The men of crows sang in chorus too, revelling in this gruesome act.

Sometimes when my taste finds cinders, I let out a chuckle to this day. It seems as though in the end, I bore the last laugh.

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Dedication:

You bid me the horizons of my dreams,
And I loved your soul for it.
As your lips parted and spoke of cause,
My own sought only you.

Although I rode hand in hand with death,
You reached for mine to find but his.
Your mortal frame broke with his grasp,
And I smote the land for this.

When the Flames wrapped you in their tongues,
I prayed in dreams you'd still found mine.
And part of me died that day,
But what had left me I now find
A piece of you resides alive.


to

E . W.

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1345:

Filth and stink. The half devoured corpses of men and women alike littered the cave network. They were not the victims of some wild beast whom they encroached on in the midst of raising cubs. No, prey to madmen, ravenous with the hunger for the flesh of their kin. Captured, beaten and lead to the slaughter, only for the gluttonous satiation of these most depraved of mankind. I covered my mouth and nose, as the stench of rot grew with each step towards the epicenter of depravity. Effigies of skulls and the flesh of men littered the halls and walls of the cavern, erected in veneration to the most profane darkness's in us.

They shrieked as I evoked myself upon their acts of heresy and sin. The vorpal-like edge of my blade found its way though them. What didn't give to the blade and the will of the Flame, only fled before me. They preyed on the weakened of us, like a plague itself. As I began to free those captive within the cells, I couldn't help but contemplate: is it the Torment or humanity itself that is our biggest threat?

I've done what I can to shake the thought. Freeing the men from their cages, I cannot help but wonder if I am damning them to repeat this same fate but another day. If this is the course for mankind. That even if we survive this disease, we still have to survive ourselves.

Time is giving me little to believe it is possible.