Chapter 1



A lonesome, tall figure stood at the easternmost base of the great Northern Barrier of ice and rock, around a small campfire that warmed his hands, battling the oncoming cold from the nearby North. Night had fallen several hours earlier, and the moon had crawled high into the ceiling of Anthos, whose stars twinkled in the frigid evening. The tall figure had his arms folded in prayer, his rugged face glowing in the firelight, while his gruff voice utter pleas of strength to a spirit of the Old Faith of the North.

This man was a lanky, long-legged Adunian by the name of Talen, a hunter and ranger whose knowledge and skill with the land was plentiful. Talen had set foot in the North before, but never had he ventured deep into it, and his mission was to do so. Lachlan Mor Elendil, a fellow Adunian and leading figure of the Adunian people, had assigned the skillful Talen to scout past the treacherous Mountains of the North, in search of suitable land in which a city could be built for Lachlano s proud and mighty people. This was Taleno s mission, to find that land, and report it to the future leader of the Adunians.

Taleno s prayer of strength came slowly to an end, and the fire he had lit glowed dimly in the moonlight as embers. His gaze lifted to the close by wall of ice which towered over him dauntingly, its shadow lingering overhead. Thick ice comprised the majority of the wall, and this was what Talen would use to ascend it. Before beginning his climb, though, Talen dumped a handful of snow over the fire he had lit, and covered it with a dead bush that he discovered nearby. Beside the now hidden fireplace, Talen carved in a small message into the dirt with a stick, a message that a fellow ranger could recognize and understand. It was a o To with three scratches on its right, the o To symbolizing Taleno s name, and the three scratches representing that Talen had left the campfire on the third night of Malino s Welcome, one of Anthoso more gentle months.

When Talen began his ascension up the icy cliff face, the sun slowly peeked over the horizon. Using two sturdy ice picks, the Adunian clambered up the vertical wall, several holes being left behind where the picks had settled in the frozen surface. The wall itself was around fourty feet high, and as Talen climbed, the sun rose higher and higher. By early afternoon, the exhausted rangero s hands gripped the edge of the wall, and with his final reserves of strength, he pulled himself up onto the flat safety atop the deadly cliff. At this, he fell into a tired slumber.

Biting cold woke Talen, gnawing at his toes. He knew that he required fire to go further into the North, but no trees were visible from the cliff top he resided upon. The sleep that had taken him had lasted several hours, as night was beginning its reign over Anthos. Quickly devouring some of the contents in his bag of belongings, mainly dried fruit and dehydrated strips of meat, Talen wore on. Deciding to follow the edge of the cliff west, Talen resumed his journey.

With daunting, snow tipped mountains on his right, and a vast drop-off to his left, Talen walked for several hours. Not long after he began, the lights of Oreno s grand city were visible, twinkling in the clear moonlight. Talen continued, until at a measure of time, a vast fortress, home of the Teutonic Order lay below him. The Sariants here owned the only safe and commonly known entryway into the North, though they guarded it heavily and allowed few to enter its reaches. Talen had tried to enter this way, but he denied passage and was swiftly escorted out of theTeutonic Ordero s land.

Half thinking to spit on the cursed lands below, with their black and white waving flags, Talen quickly shook off the thought of insulting the Order, and turned back towards the North. The feet of a mountain pass were mere feet away, and were the route that Talen would choose to take. As he wandered along it, the ranger soon met the prints of some great hoofed beast, whose prints were much larger than even an Orco s footsteps. Mystified by the massive tracks, Talen quickly followed them through the mountain pass, deeper and deeper into the North. Morning once again crept up and replaced the night sky with a dim pink glow. As the suno s rays just began their warming, Talen found himself at the end of the pass, and into an open clearing of land with several massive spruce trees ahead, from which he would gather firewood.



After snapping off several dry limbs from one of the spiny spruces, Talen soon followed the tracks of the hoofed beast once more. They led to a broken pathway of sorts, in fact, a great road that was ruined by time. Along this road lay forest trees that compared to giants, along with the ruins of a watchtower of old. Overtaken by the lando s mysterious, regal beauty, Talen walked towards the marvelous tower, which had long been forsaken and empty. A dark doorway beckoned his tired feet inside, at which he entered and followed a staircase down under the ground. At the feet of the stone steps, he lay the firewood from the spruce trees down, and quickly set them ablaze. The firelight revealed the room he was in to be a storeroom of old, though it was hard to identify it as such, due to its wear.

Overcome by exhaustion, Talen bundled himself in his thick, green cloak, and lay quietly near the fire, falling asleep immediately. Day pressed into night, and night wore on to morning. It had been three days since he began his journey into the North, and it was now the sixth day of Malino s Welcome.

(This is an event that my character has been a part of on Lord of the Craft, a Minecraft server. Some of the terms in this tale may be confusing, but they follow the lore of LotC. Join us today!)