I gots teh ideaz

New story idea. You like? I like.


Eldrick looked out over the rolling hills of Honey Mead and smiled. He was almost home. It had been ten years since he had set off with the war wizards to begin his training in the Blackspire. How he had cried that day. He had been just a boy when the Searchers had come for him, just a boy when they pulled him from his mother’s arms and ferried him across the Gullway to Manslin and the dark tower that dominated the skyline of that humble fishing town. Master Collins brooked no nonsense, however, and soon after he arrived the tall wizard’s caused Eldrick to fall in line with the rest of the boys at the “Spire”.
For eight years he ate, drank and slept magic, pouring over ancient tomes and new treatises and theories with equal vigor. He learned quickly and would have been promoted to Head Boy had it not been for his temper. Eldrick took offense easily and was as quick with his tongue as he was with a spell. Several would be bullies had been temporarily blinded by a powerful hex or else frozen to their beds while they slept and had to be thawed out, a painful, slow, process.
He made few friends in the Blackspire, but on the scant feastdays and holidays the war wizards permitted their charges to celebrate he would go into town and explore. That is where he met Lia. She was a dark haired slip of a girl with the olive skin typical of all Mansliners. He had done simple tricks for her that made her squeal with delight, levitation here, a conjured spark dragon there were enough to keep Lia smiling and laughing for hours. For Eldrick she was a reminder of home, of his family in Honey Mead of his mother and sister laughing as they prepared supper, and of his father, wise and strong, threshing new cut wheat in the sun.
Every feastday was spent with Lia and as they grew so did their feelings for one another. Eight summers had transformed Eldrick from a pale, thin, boy to a handsome, fair-haired man and when Eldrick looked at Lia he no longer saw the skinny slip of a girl he had known as a child, but a slender brown-eyed beauty blossoming into womanhood. They pledged their undying love to one another one midsummer evening and made plans to be wed. The Mansliners were of the typical disposition toward wizards; they were fine as a fiddle as long as they stayed in their tower and left the good folk of the town alone. Lia’s parents were no exception and disapproved of here seeing the “wizard boy”. They were to marry in secret at the summer solstice under the sympathetic eyes of Acolyte Kinsmon, a cleric that Lia knew well.
It was not to be. The night of the wedding Eldrick was awakened by the bass of Master Collin’s magically augmented voice booming in his unsuspecting ear. He was to report to the Chamber of Travel immediately. War had broken out in the north. The savage Shogar had sacked the towns of Rilius and Sinster and were threatening to sweep south into the very heart of the Midlands. Only Collin Kingshammer, Lord of the Ebresh, and a small force of Eladii Dragoons were keeping the Shogar from pouring through Lorin’s Gap and putting all before them to the sword and flame.