Introductions from the Cursed Mage of Mendiera

The table talk, as usual, turned to what people were leaving behind, what they hoped to get when they got to Macinar. They always talked about the islands like a paradise, a promised land that no hardship could touch. Some few weren't so obviously optimistic about such things, but it seemed, quite often, that no one was immune to the island's charms. No one, that is, but the man in the robes, always off to the end of the table, always...distracted, as though the thoughts and panoply in his head was of a more pressing concern than the talk that bubbled around him.

This went on for some time. After the first week, people grew a bit unnerved. A few days after, he became somewhat of a pariah. This continued apace, until, one night, while a merchant traveling to meet the rest of his family, already safely ensconced in Macinar, took a bit too much time complaining about his beleagured estate and fortunes. The solitary man laughed quietly, provoking the failing merchant's ire. He roared to his feet, his jowels turning an unhealthy red. "And what do you, my erstwhile friend, find funny about the ruining of a man's life, his family? You've got more than the rest of us, judging by the state of those robes, compared to the threadbare castoffs left to me and mine! How, then, is my misery amusing to you?"

The man looked up then, pushing back the hood that he had previously been almost permanently ensconced within. Pale hair laid over skin gone a touch grey, skin that made most think "sickness" or, for a very few present, "death".

"You want my story laid bare, then, like the others? Fine. Listen then, my fat merchant, and tell me if I don't have cause to laugh.

My mother died in childbirth, having me, the family mistake. There is a curse in my family's bloodline, going back so many generations that when it started, why it started, are lost to me; it stayed, where she left.

I was raised as much by the unsettled shades of my dead ancestors as my father, a man who was never happy unless he was at the bottom of a bottle. The pallid child, reminder that he had helped carry on my mother's curse through me, muttering to things he couldn't see, staring at spots that, to him, were empty. Really, it's no surprise that he took so strongly to alcohol; some part of him couldn't deal with bringing me into the world, and another, larger part had died wholly when my mother stopped breathing. Still, my parents had meant well. They'd never planned on having a child at all, and, if his drunken mutterings can be believed, shouldn't have been able to regardless. Really though, it's just simple stupidity to think that a family line such as ours is going to accept such a defeatist view of things. Letting the curse die out isn't an option to them, the trapped and wandering.

So. I learned from people long dead about things that no one else cared much about. Stories, legends, knoweldge of what lies beyond Mendiera, though nothing too clear ever came from that besides the name "Macinar". In the end, they couldn't do much more than put me on the right path at a very early age; the memory and will of the lingering dead gets twisted and weak with age, after all, and my family hasn't been on the islands in generations.

Kovdor, our city in Mendiera, was a melting pot, even more so than the rest of the country. The stubbornly entrenched, the hopeful, the restless, misfits of all kinds have washed up and settled in for their various reasons. The one stroke of luck I ever really got was being in such a place growing up. When I was all of seven, a minor necromancers, "Elias of the Bones", or just "Bones" around town, first helped me realise that the ghosts of one's family cropping up is not a generally common affair; he wanted to take me on, but, surprisingly, the family was against it. Enough generations had tried, and exhausted that route, for them to know with fervent certainty that the magic of the dead was not going to help. Elias accepted it, and actually left Kovdor shortly thereafter; he never could get used to the feeling of being watched after that night.

When the mage came through, though, they, and I, saw my chance. I was ten then, and newly orphaned; my father's incessant boozing had put him in an early grave, though, thankfully, he was the wrong side of the family to stick around after. When Tareth, the Red Mage who fostered me from that point, came into my life, my childhood, always a rather bleak thing, ended completely. From the moment of our agreement on, my training and indoctrination began. Tareth taught me the basics of his, our, craft, administered the earliest of tests, and built me into a thriving, if not overly happy, adolescent. At fifteen, I was accepted as full apprentice, after a vision of sorts solidified my desire to follow Gamasen's path. While the pursuits of Lieet are noble, and even Nrogoth's call has its merits, they are too...limiting. The middle path, the path of the Self, would lead me to the answers I needed.

So I studied. I worked, and learned all I could under Tareth, and was discussing options for furthering my studies when the first plague hit Kovdor a little over a year ago. I was left in perfect health, and Tareth died. The choice was easy from there; I sold off what little we had, bought my passage on this ship, and go into Macinar with no real hopes, no real plans, and no real idea what to do to end a curse spanning hundreds of years that will claim my own life, and soul, unless I can somehow end it.

And that, my fine fat merchant, is why I laugh at you worrying about having a full purse when your family is safe and waiting. You don't appreciate what you have, and that, to me, is the best joke of all."

The room stayed hushed. The merchant took his seat. The journey went on.