Raven Darkwood

In the days before the wandering road claimed them, he was born of house and hearth in the isle-city of Tiss, where the tall clock chimed over grey stones and the damp sea-winds whispered of strict laws and old ledgers. Yet, when he counted but five winters, a span scarcely longer than the brief blossoming of a spring briar, his house chose to cast off the certainty of their home and venture out into the great wide world.

Three years they dwelt within the sun-baked marble and disciplined legions of the Imperial Reman Republic, a land of iron structure and proud banners. But even there the hearth-fires did not stay lit, and the road beckoned them onward still. At last, they crossed the borders into the green fields and bustling trade-ways of the Alliance of Dawn Lords, known to travelers simply as the Dawn Lands. It was beneath those wide, rolling skies and amidst those scattered thorps that he spent the days of his youth and the long, formative years of his growing manhood.

He was reared in a strict and pious observance, moving ever from town to town as his folk plied their trade as traveling merchants. In those days, simples and dried leaves were a coin as common as silver, sought by townsfolk for health or whispered-of for death, and this peaked the lad's mind, for he marvelled greatly at what virtues herbs or humble crops might truly hold, seeing how precious they were held upon the market. Always a deep wonder stirred within him, that a mere shoot from the soil could stay the ebbing of a life. Sickness was a dark and heavy shadow in those years, a cruel thing that Raven beheld too oft in valley and hold. Whole communities had withered and passed away into silence, swallowed by virulent plagues that swept the land like a grey wind.

It sat never easily upon his heart to watch men and women look upon their dying kin with empty hands, helpless to aid save for the dread of catching the rot themselves. Raven yearned ever to stay these tragedies, yet for long it seemed that prayers alone were the sole weapon within his grasp. He searched out every scrap of lore concerning health or hidden healing that he might lay his hands upon, yet for a time he was bound to the family trade, walking the long paths to isolated hamlets as a humble peddler, striving to win a crust from whatever trifles he carried.

As the years drifted by, however, a slow dawn broke upon his mind. He began to perceive the hidden rhythms of sickness, tracing the paths of symptoms and noting what rough, empirical crafts might stay the hand of death for a season. Yet Death was a stern master, and those lives that flickered and failed beneath his care became ghosts of memory, slowly wearing upon his spirit. Yet, by some uncounted grace, he found himself touched by a strange immunity, though he dabbled and experimented amidst the contagion, the sickness could not claim him. To him it seemed a chance granted from above that he might yet snatch one soul back from the dark, even if it cost him his own.

Often he would stand alone, gazing into the mist, and question if his clumsy ministrations were not themselves the harbingers of doom. Guilt, heavy as stone, crept

into his breast at each failure. In time, his craft turned to grim trial and error, as he sought to lay bare the hidden workings of mortal flesh and stay the march of pestilence. Sensing that much of the rot was borne upon the unseen air, though simple folk clung to old notions that every fever was a curse laid down by angry powers, he took a remnant of cloth, a keepsake carried from his early days in Tiss, and bound it ever about his face to stem the tainted breath. Thus he walked into the wider paths of the Dawn Lands, a silent wanderer wrapped in shadow and scent of herbs, seeking light where none else dared to tread.