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Maxim, when will you finally face your
Image in the mirror? When you’re able to
Recall your rich past? Then Remember!
Read what was written: of victory and surrender,
Of wars and faith, love and hate; I
Reckon you will be surprised by your legacy, Maxim
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Do you remember your first childhood exploration? A reconnaissance expedition into unfamiliar and probably hostile territory, consisting of the neighbour’s vast back garden or maybe even the church graveyard, for the more daring type. The simple thrill of walking unspoilt ground, or at least, that is what you imagine; to share the adventure with one of your peers, or go on alone when they fail you. Do you remember when you skipped a heart’s beat as rustling leaves disturbed night’s peace; when a mouse showed up, blinking up to you with its tiny marble eyes; or perhaps you almost scared the living daylights out of yourself when you sneezed because of the layers of dust in an abandoned house and prayed that none of the inhabiting ghosts whould notice... someone is about to find out how it is...
He held his breath. A crow left a treetop and lazily swept his wings into the coming twilight. Wind disturbed the last leaves in the trees, who fought the cycle of autumn with much bravery but without much success and as Yip peered up a few of them circled down to him. He caught one midair and turned to show his newly acquired treasure to his companion, but found out that she hadn’t left her spot and was now several tens of feet behind him. He dropped the leave instantly and hustled back to Britt, the baker’s daughter. She stood there trembling and it wasn’t because of the cold. “Why don’t you come along, silly girl? That was just a bird, we’re not even halfway yet!†But Britt just stood there looking very upset inwards but trying not to show it outwards and now that Yip could examine her more closely in the fading sunlight, he saw a large wet spot a little below her belly, spreading towards her legs. He tried to hold his laughter, but chuckled anyway. “Go home, silly, this is not for little girls, find your dolls and go play with them.†To mark his words he turned around with an elegant twist, like a knight parading for his captain, and marched off. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw a shadow hurrying down the hill, he just managed to catch the sniffing sound she made as well. His faithful pet, the rat Crumbs, climbed up to his shoulder and too watched the girl running home. Yip stroked the rat lovingly for a moment. He was not the boy who pitied little girls for not daring to come and check out ruins and abandoned castles, he had always been helpful to his little sister, catching her when she stumbled over rocks in the main street or saving her from rude farm lads, but the sight of Britt speeding back to her warm fireplace, her mum and her dad, brought a smile to his face: he knew he was the brave one here, with noble deeds to fulfill this very night and with renewed vigour he followed his course, upwards.
If Yip would have looked behind him a little longer, he would have seen his home village preparing for the night. Britt, hurrying to her parental home, was greeted by the happy lighting of torches and lanterns, a small comfort for the slightly panicking girl. She came down from Marhillen’s closest hill, which marked the northern edge of the small town. Marhillen, its name from both the marches in the north which used to be an inner sea long ago and the surrounding area of glowing countryside which stretched away to east and west and south, existed only to indicate the crossing of a traderoute coming from the east, cutting through the town on its way to the ocean in the west, and one of the bigger roads from the south, ending at the passing traderoute because of the swamps ahead. Here the human merchants from the east met with the small Elven convoys from the nearby woods, as well as bypassing Drobens who commuted between the mountain areas in south and east and the lonely Borderpeak in the west.
Marhillen’s civilians prided themselves on their willingness to listen and tolerance towards ‘the other’, be they of other race or faith. Nevertheless, when Elementals, Goblins or even the more Vampiric persons passed through the town, which occasionally did happen, they would act with a fair amount of reserve, for people with claws, fangs, pointy teeth, not to mention tails or simply a fiery, airy, watery, or earthly personality were entitled to a healthy amount of suspicion. Fortunately, the town of profiting small-businessmen and artisans had lived fairly unspoilt through the chaotic times of lately, though the number of families passing by looking for new residences had not gone unnoticed. The citizens prayed to their Foret for good fortune as they had always done, even now the town’s priest had gone mad in agony during one of the services, as he felt the absence of a greater being for the first time.
All of this ment little to young Yip, who had mainly cared for his father’s stories when the family set down in the evening around the fireplace. His father, as he always proudly told his friends, was the owner of a secret recipe for the best beer in the whole world, and although the author considers a long forgotten Sidhe dynasty far superior in brewing “the people’s goldâ€Â, what Andrick Cornwater created in an old farm a little southwest of Marhillen was definately the best available in a radius of fifty miles, which is further away than most of the citizens of the village had even been. In his line of business, he heard a lot of good tales, though he restricted himself to the, shall we say, purer and happier stories to pass on to his son. Yip had not yet heard of terminology like “lust, decay, slaughter†and similar words and showed little interest in getting to know any of these, while showing a supreme talent in remembering the more heroic, epic, romantic or simply funny narratives. And many of these had somehow evolved around the place he was heading to.