Harlech
Posts 59
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He had a name once... and a body… eyes…. a heart… and a family. All of those were lost to time. They have passed from the keen of men into the ages. He has traveled the length and breadth of the land countless times. He has watched the boundaries of countries ebb and flow like waves on the beach. He has watched empires sprout, blossom, wither and perish. Yet he is still here, either unmoved or uncaring about the designs of men. Few know what drives him, and far fewer still are those that know his story.
He had been a farmer once. Life from the land, the bounty of harvest had been his stock and trade. Prosperity and a comfortable life rewarded his hard work. Eventually he married and began raising a family. Ten seasons had passed, and in a sudden spasm of bloodshed and terror, war stripped all this from him. No one remembers who fought or why, but war is indiscriminate who it takes, it cares not for man, woman or child.
He had been reaping the harvest in the fields that autumn when the soldiers came. They brought with them terrible beasts whose eyes burned like coals. He watched in speechless horror as his family was cut down by the soldiers, or worse yet, run to ground by the hell-spawn beasts and their flesh torn asunder. He watched as his wife’s breast was pierced by a spear. He watched as his little 8 year old daughter was tied to a tree and used as target practice for men with crossbows. And horror of horrors, he watched as the youngest, a strapping young baby boy was torn in twain by two of the beasts.
Terror turned his body into stone… a scream of rage and fear locked in his paralyzed throat as he crouched in the bushes. Eventually one of the beasts found him. As the snarling creature pounced at him his leaden limbs sprang to life and he bounded for the ford across the small river nearby. The howls of the creature brought the attention of the soldiers who gave chase as well. Water saved his life. Of that he is certain. The creature stopped at the edge of the water and bayed angrily at the escaping prey. The soldiers, unfamiliar with the terrain, chose the wrong place to try to cross, and having missed the shallow spot, floundered in the water as the man disappeared into the trees.
Eventually, darkness fell on that shattered day. And the man stopped running and began walking. The next day, he was joined by a few others and together they walked. The hours turned into days, and the few into many. The days flowed into weeks, but the man’s mind never left his family. He wanted to return, to see if anything remained, if someone had managed to survive. By spring the war had burned out, as all wars eventually do. In time, the man returned to the spot that had been his life, his home.
The man walked through the weed-choked field. A slight movement near the woodline caught his eye. He broke into a run as he glimpsed blonde hair. His little daughter had blond hair! As he approached the crouched figure his heart raced in delight. If his daughter had somehow managed to survive, then perhaps his wife had to! The small figure spun suddenly. He was sure now it was his daughter. He couldn’t tell from her face… there was none really… just strips of rotting flesh and a grinning skull. The crossbow bolts still jutting from her body served to confirm her identity. It hissed at him and he ran across the field, but his daughter did not pursue.
He stopped running when he realized she wasn’t chasing. He stared blankly at her for several minutes. His heart, broken once was shattered again. His beautiful little girl! Tears welled up in his eyes and fell to the ground and sobbed in front of what had been his home. He wasn’t sure if minutes or hours had passed, but he felt something touch his arm. As his senses flooded back to him, he was overwhelmed by the smell of corrupted flesh. He looked down and a tiny hand had grasped his forearm. He looked down and realized it was his toddler son. He had crawled out of the bushes, his rotting, putrefied entrails trailing behind mixed with sticks and leaves. He wrenched free and sprang to his feet staring at the tiny horror at his feet. Then he heard his wife’s voice.
“My love, you have returned to us! We have missed you so much!”
He spun about to face the voice, but only a wavering shadow framed by the doorway of his burned out home greeted him. And he could sense a terrible hunger there too.
For a second time he turned and fled from his home… from his family. He had never been a particularly religious man, but he and his family had observed the rites of the seasons, the religious days and certainly the festivals. How had this tragedy happened?
As time passed he again turned to the land, a hollow shell of what he had been. Speaking with a learn’d man that passed through one of the many villages he had tended the fields for he got his answer.
“Your family, my son, was unburied. The unburied dead make a ready conduit for undeath. Those who meet untimely demise make perfect vessels for it, as a matter of fact. It was because of this you found your family in such a state”
And a third time his heart was broken. He was consumed by guilt. Had he returned sooner to bury them, then perhaps they would not have found their way into this state! Bitterness settled unto his soul, as winter does onto the field. The answer came to him one winter night. A voice in his soul. A single name, really. Jergal. Jergal the Forgotten One. Jergal, Lord of the End of Everything. Jergal, Scribe of the Dead. Jergal, Protector and Guardian of tombs and proper burials.
The man picked up his scythe and turned his back on the land, bent on one thing. That no one should face what he had. War might consume people and leave behind their shattered and torn bodies, but at least he could see to their remains, and keep them from rising again as undead.
For years, decades some say, he travelled from one forgotten battlefield to another tending to the dead. From one corner of the world to the other he strode. He took from the dead only enough to survive. He buried bodies in the uncounted thousands. Performing for each the rites of burial… of peaceful passage into the afterlife and to their appropriate reward. Eventually people learned of him and grew to fear him as he travelled. They feared him as a Harbinger of Doom. People would bar their doors and windows. He was denied lodging or the brief comfort of a tavern or brothel. He didn’t seem to notice the slights, so driven in his mission that he was…. he simply turned his back and moved on.
After countless years living and laboring thus, he laid down in the lee of boulder on a cold mountain side one night. He had spent the entire day burying a village in the valley below. He had watched with dispassionate interest as a band of soldiers had raped, pillaged and eventually murdered the villagers that morning. He had walked down the hillside by mid morning and began his grim task after the soldiers had moved on. As he lay there, he wished for enough wood to build a fire. Or wonder of wonders a bed. He had forgotten the last time he had slept in a proper bed! As he lay pondering the years, and the things he missed, he felt a curious … snap. He sprang to his feet and looked about. He looked down and realized he was looking at his body. He studied the lines etched deeply into his face, the eyes staring sightlessly into the cold night, and the blue tinge to his lips.
In a panic, he realized that here, on this mountainside, he would likely never be found, and, with no burial, be a vessel for the very thing he had labored his whole life to prevent. He then felt something grip his soul… begin to mold and shape it. Terror welled up in his throat. Had this been what his family had felt as unlife took hold? He felt his soul pressed downward back toward his body, still being kneaded and pulled, like a baker shaping dough.
With a start, he awoke. He looked about, and realized it was almost dawn. He took a breath and felt the mountain air rush into his lungs. He picked up his scythe and strode down the path to a tiny, calm pool near a mountain waterfall. As he bent over the pool, he recoiled at his reflection. Instead of his face looking back there was a void where his face should have been! His clothing, never stylish and not new in years had been replaced with a tattered, dirt stained burial shroud that moved eerily in the slight breeze. As he staggered away from the pool, he realized he floated a foot or more over the ground.
GODS! He had become the very thing he had sought to prevent in the world. Oddly, he felt no urge to flee the coming sunlight, no will of some unseen master. Well, fate had cursed him like this, but as long as he had free will, he could see to it that he didn’t remain like this. He sat down on a boulder and waited for the coming of the sun. The sun would burn away the undeath, and free him from this prison. Instead, as the sun rose over the mountaintop and washed across the valley, he felt it warm his body… no… warm his soul. He was alive…. but wasn’t. Puzzled, he picked up his scythe and moved down to the valley floor, and walked off in the direction of the next village. He was sure the soldiers had gotten there by now, and while he was locked in the quandary of his recently discovered condition, he still felt he had a duty to do.
As he crested the last hill above the village, he was greeted by a familiar scene. Thick smoke rose in dark pillars against the clear winter sky. The cries of the frightened and the dying. Animals running free, trying to escape the blood, carnage and fire. The soldiers were still there, working their terrible pleasure upon the humble, innocent souls of the village. He sat down to await the departure of the soldiers and the task he would perform afterwards… one that he had performed countless times before.
As he waited and viewed the tableau, something in him boiled over. For years he had sat impassively by and waited for death to consume those in the path of war. He had stood by as men took innocent lives and spilt innocent blood. Always he had crept in afterwards and cleaned up. Not once had he lifted his hand to prevent it. The death of his family, of his life cast asunder suddenly welled in him. He snatched up his scythe and ran down the hill with a bellow of rage.
The soldiers below were stricken. They turned from their carnage as an earthly howl filled the valley. They saw an unearthly figure flowing down the hillside at an astounding speed. Each of them felt their doom at hand. They turned to flee, but none got out of the village alive. In a few brief moments it was over. The man strode over to the surviving villagers to see if he could help them. They turned and fled, screaming at the very sight of him. He shrugged and turned back to the task at hand. As he walked back into the village he surveyed the scene. There were scattered bodies of villagers, but try as he might, he could see no bodies of the soldiers he had moments before slain. He could see blood, and evidence of battle, but no bodies. He looked at his scythe, as if to confirm what he was seeing, and he realized that it was no longer the simple farming tool he had carried for decades, but was now a tool for dispensing death and oblivion. As he finished burying the dead, he was saddened by the terror of the villagers at his sight, but, at least they were alive to be afraid. He took a measure of cold comfort from that.
As years turned into decades and decades stacked to make centuries, the Man-become-Death has crisscrossed the world, drawn to wars and to the dead that need attending to because of them. Sometimes, if the opportunity presented itself, he would intervene and attempt to save people, or guide them safely through the conflict. Wherever his scythe struck, the victim was consumed. Their body, soul and essence. Where it went, the Man-become-Death didn’t know. Or care. They were not there anymore to wreak havoc upon innocent souls, making his job easier.
And after centuries of this, he was drawn to Sembia, and the war looming there. Great battles had already left thousands of dead behind, and the war against its neighbor Trinity would likely leave countless more. He neared Trinity and saw a group of Sembian soldiers about to attack an outlying village near by. As the soldiers marched up the road, he stepped from the forest in front of them. With an unusual calm, they stopped and spread out. The villagers, seeing the undead figure and the mass of soldiers at the edge of their village sped out of the village as quickly as they could.
The soldiers, seeing their quarry escaping rushed the undead figure. Scythe flashed and bodies and souls were consumed. They withdrew, reformed, and attacked again. And again. The figure was pushed back as he guarded the retreat of the villagers. Finally, at the gates of gates, the soldiers of Trinity rushed out and crushed the surviving Sembian soldiers. They turned their swords on the undead figure, closing with him. The Man-become-Death faced them with a heavy heart. Then a voice cried out.
“Sir Brandon, stop them, he saved us!”
The woman the voice belonged to ran a few steps out from the gates. A man dressed in plate armor lowered his sword and took a few steps toward apparition. He peered intently for a few moments at the figure, then spoke.
“Allow him to pass.”
The men parted to allow the figure to pass. As he flowed up the road past the knight and towards the gates of Trinity, Sir Brandon felt it’s cold gaze upon him. Then a sibilant, hissing whisper issued from where the face should have been.
“Thaaannk Yoooouu”
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"Never violate a woman, nor harm a child. Do not lie, cheat or steal. These things are for lesser men. Protect the weak against the evil strong. And never allow thoughts of gain to lead you into the pursuit of evil."
-The Iron Code of Druss the Legend
Kevin Otherwhen
Arkalensk Meatch
Calad Silverwind
Streea Verve Tagnik'zur
Elomyr McGuinness
Thanatos de Morte
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