Backstory:
The clanging of bells and the rabble of sailors by the sails and the port announced the departure of a ship was departing at the far end of port. One Jonas Sodor couldn’t have been gladder for it. It wasn’t that he disliked the man; he was friendly enough and had a lot of interesting things to say, but Jonas could say with certainty that he had never before encountered a man that could talk
that much about anything while deviating wildly at the slightest whims.
The man seemed like a regular traveler. He was dressed the part for one, and since the man wasn’t carrying around anything that could be merchandise except for the bow and the quiver, Jonas had guessed that he was one of those free souls that was rare to the quite backwards town such as Dagger’s End, named so for the shape of the port that jutted out a ways into the sea into a point. Eager to hear what stories this man had to tell, Jonas had struck up a conversation in the hopes of the stories alleviating his somewhat stale life, only to end up on the receiving end of an unwelcome monologue.
Jonas sighed as he massaged his forehead. On the counter in front of him sat an empty mug of ale. He gazed at the dregs of his drink for a couple of moments before making up his mind. “Give me another round would you?”
A burly hand briskly took the mug off the counter and refilled it. “Always something as too much.”
“True, true,” murmured Jonas as he gratefully raised his mug to his lips. “If a mouse could talk, it couldn’t have spoken any faster than he did.”
“Was talking about your drink,” replied the barkeep and looked thoughtfully at the seat beside Jonas. “Although, the man did speak a lot. Very strange for a Xitian.”
Jonas frowned. “Xitian? The man gave me a tour round the Nether but he was clean Mesalian.”
The barkeep tapped one eye with his sausage of a finger. “One of his eyes was red. Definitely nether in his blood.”
Jonas dismissed the barkeep’s logic with a flick of a hand. “Bloodshot eye, not Xitian; the whites of his eye were red. Besides I know he isn’t one, because he
wants to become one.” He took a swig of his ale. “Damned nutter he is.”
The barkeep raised his brows in interest. “I dunno anyone that’d want to become a Xitian.”
“Now we do.” Jonas shrugged. “Claims he’s a researcher of sorts, trying to find a way to change the nature of us Mesalians or something like that.”
“I wasn’t listening,” admitted the barkeep. “But why?”
“Got mad-eyed for a Xitian, apparently, and parents would hear none of it. The Xit’s would not have a Mesalian dirty up their brood, and the bloke’s didn’t want the same. The guy didn’t give up, got disowned, and now he’s looking for a way to become a Xitian.” Jonas shook his head. “Touched in the head, I say, or got dropped head first to the floor when he was a wee one.”
“Tough,” said the barkeep. “With the gate being now open and all.”
Jonas snorted. “Won’t faze him if you ask me. He didn’t care going round looking for Xitians during the Civil Wars. A gate opening isn’t going to stop a man like him.”
“You sound sure.”
He shrugged. “I’ve heard his entire life story and more, I should know.” He put down his mug and traced numbers on the counter as he chronologized. “Born in a town far west, called Barns, (which apparently is a quiet town with a stream cutting through it in which you can catch fish in the summer) father a hunter, mother a herbalist, and grew up learning the trade (and a great lot of mischief, including poisoning the stream that gave everyone in town a mild case of diarrhea), father got enlisted, died, (a great deal of episodes on how the crying was done) and took over as the town hunter at the young age of 16.”
The barkeep chipped in as Jonas took another swig. “Sounds like he figured his life out.”
Jonas raised a finger. “Only until he became 22. I suppose he was straight as a board till then. Least, from what he tells me, he learned most of what he knows of his craft in those seven years, the plants, the cutting up, and whatever else those hunters do with their bows and arrows.”
“But then?”
“But then, the chap just happens to meet this Xit. He was making his rounds in the forest for herbs and the like, and ventures much further than he usually does, and comes across this cabin in the woods, with a family of Xits just living there, plotting Isohel knows what.” Jonas takes a long drink and looks demandingly at the barkeep. “And what’s a good level-headed man to do? Alert the authorities, right? But this nutter, he goes and makes friends with them, giving them advice on the edible plants in the forest and whatnot, and then goes and falls in love with the daughter!”
The barkeep scratches his bald head. “Ah, well. Surely nothing too bad about that? Some of them Xitians do look mighty fine.”
Jonas waves his mug irritatedly. “Doesn’t give you the reason to want to marry them. It’s not moral. Anyways, the man goes and proposes, and gets declined because he’s clean-blooded, none of this Aether or the Nether in his blood like you or I, and makes a scene of it. He starts trying to mix the nether into himself to become one of them, and of course that raises a lot of questions in town. You can imagine how his mother reacted; in his own words, she was “raving like a cat that’s been thrown into the river and held by its tail afterwards”. The barkeep chuckled and Jonas grinned appreciatively. “So the lad gets kicked out of town, but not before promising those Xits that he’d return one of them, and starts going round the lands looking for more Xits and doing everything to his body that would upset even the dastardliest of necromancers all round – wouldn’t be surprised if the chap falls over dead in the ship. He was positively giddy when the portal reopened, and would have run straight for it if it wasn’t for the high tension in the area. Now, he’s just going over to the Forbidden Lands to see if folks there know anything better about degrading one’s body with nether. Like he hasn’t done enough damage already! I’ll wager that’s how he popped his eye.” He raised his mug to find it empty. He looked confused for a few moments, then turned his longing gaze to the barkeep, and was candidly ignored. He sighed and licked the few drops in his mug. “Well, what a nutter eh? That’s what I get for talking to strangers, an earful of things that I’ve no concern for.”
Jonas bid the barkeep goodbye and left a few silvers on the table. And only when he had left did the barkeep let out a tired sigh of relief as he took the mug off for washing. A couple of other patrons smiled sympathetically, and one chuckled. “Tough day ain’t it?”
The barkeep shrugged. “Ain’t too bad. Least if Jonas hadn’t talked to that other chap, he would’ve talked to me, and I’d have had to listen to both of them.” He shuddered at the thought and pushed the silvers into his pouch.
“Eh, what’s the name of that crazy bloke again? Did Jonas ever say?”
The barkeep shook his head. “Didn’t, but I caught it: Terry Riggs, it was. Man of thirty.”
“Terry, is it? Well cheers for the chipper and his crazy quest! May we never hear from him again!”
The simpler version:
Terry Riggs was born in a relatively large but quiet town of Barns, to parents that loved him dearly. His father was a hunter, his mother was a herbalist, and they provided much for the town and were respected for their contributions. To these rather prominent figures of the town, Terry was a late child, and an only one at that, and was given much love. As such, Terry got away with the many mischiefs that would've meant some good amount of scolding or lashing for other children of the town. This treatment rather got to inflating Terry's ego and his daring nature, in other words, he was spoilt.
Terry as an infant, round the age of 3, realized quite quickly that he could have whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted if he cried loud enough. Then round when he started running about with the other kids in town, round the age of 7, he realized that his father was the leader of the hunters in the town, and provided much food for the townspeople, and that his mother was the most knowledgeable on the topic of herbs of the local forest. Even the mayor was less important in the monthly town gathering; times were hard, what with the wars ravaging the lands, the people who could provide efficient means of survival were held above all others.
He was untouchable, and the moment his realization reached thus far, he began to have his way in life at the young age of 10. At first, it was benign. He would take the wares from shops liberally, and commanded the other kids in town follow his orders when they played together. It was quite harmless, people thought, after all, they were benefitting greatly from Terry's parents being in town. But as Terry reached his adolescent years of 14, he rapidly came to be the thorn in everyone's side that they just couldn't pull out in fear of offending his parents. They did however, hint at Terry's parents that his antics needed some fixing, and while the parents grasped the problem soon, they couldn't put Terry under a firm enough grasp. They did much to direct his seemingly endless energy towards causing havoc elsewhere, such as taking him along on their hunting/foraging trips, but they only gave him more armament to causing some of Terry's more spectaculr pranks.
The year Terry turned 16, his father was enlisted into the Civil war efforts, and that gave Terry more of a free reign, as his mother was powerless to stop him. But some time after Terry poisoned the town's water supply that caused an onslaught of diarrhea, which he just barely got away with by pleading innocence by ignorance of the properties of the herbs that he 'accidentally' dropped into the stream, news came to the town that his father had died, barely a year since the last time Terry had seen him.
To Terry, his father was invulnerable. No wild animal could stand up to him, and each arrow from his father's bow found its target and made sure the target stayed still. The fact that he had died made everything seem so pointless. Terry and his mother sat in the dining room for days. His mother sobbing silently by the window, and he, just staring at a spider making itself a home in the corner. At the last hour of the week, Terry rose from the table, a fresh look of determination on his face, and fetched his father's bow and arrows from his room, and before his mother could say anything, left the house.
He later returned, head to toe covered in dirt and leaves. There were no remaining arrows in the quiver, and he had no catch to claim his own, but his face said it all. His mother rose from her spot, and embraced her son, a fresh stream of tears running down her face. And he managed, for almost a decade, to contribute to the development and welfare of the town. Not as well as his father had done, but well enough to earn his respect and cast the old memories of him aside. Well, almost; he still talked too much.
All seemed to be going well for the town of Barns and young Terry. The Civil War had ended a year ago, and Terry at the ripe age of 21, was almost as respected as his father had been. But then as it happens to all youth, he fell in love. Long story short, he came across a family of Xitians hiding out in the wilderness and after a period of friendship, he fell in love with the daughter. However, although the Xitians were quite fond of the lad, they did not want Mesalian blood in their family. Rejected, Terry returned home with a heavy heart, and much to his mother's worries, did not eat or talk for the whole day.
The very next day, however, he met the day full of enthusiasm and excitement, and utterly confused and even horrified the townspeople when he started talking of how he would become a Xitian. The elderly knew of the horrors that the Xitians had caused firsthand, and even those who were relatively young knew enough of the slavery and the Purges to know what had to be done when a Xitian was spotted nearby; Terry knew of these tales as well as the next person, but as far as he was concerned, they were stories of the past. Soon, the whole tale was out. The first response of the people was to go after the evil Xitians who had bewitched their resident hunter, but nobody aside from Terry knew where to find them. The second response was to try and reason with Terry, mainly by his mother, but no sense or logic could find a way to into his euphoric mind. The third and last resort, was to chase him out of town. He had been touched by the Xitians, and there was no telling what he might do under the influence.
Sad to see his distraught mother, but unable to convince her of his love, he left, deciding to embrace the freedom he now had from the responsibilites of hunting for an entire town. He travelled all over, making inquiries, experimenting - mainly on himself - to find some clue as to how he might turn his blood into that of an Xitian's. When the portal to the Dusk Realm opened again, he was one of the first to run to the area, although with different intentions than that of most others. When refused admission to the vicinity of the portal, Terry decided to resume his travels and return some other time when things would be smoothened out between the races. His search carried him far and wide, for nearly eight years he traveled, hunting and selling meat and leather for his traveling expenses.
He learnt nothing in those long years, except that perhaps infusing nether directly onto his eye might not have been his best idea. The Xitian who did the infusing was wholeheartedly of the same opinion, but the job was easy money, and he wasn't too bothered leaving Terry writhing in pain, stripped of his valuables. His rather unfortunate plight set him back, but his enthusiasm didn't wane. His next destination was the Forbidden Lands, where it was still full of mysteries and unexplored lands. He had had heard of tales that some Xitians of old had ran to those lands during the Purges, and he had hopes that he would run into some that would perhaps know of a way to fulfill his dream. So thirty and his heart buzzing with excitement, he boarded the first ship to the Forbidden Lands to a settlement quite deep in those lands, in hopes of finding what he had been searching for, for the past nine years.
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