------------- Ironwood Tales - Threads and Beginnings

Every story, every journey has to start somewhere. Sometimes with one single event, one common thread. Something brings them together. Something turns separate lives into a single goal, however brief. Sometimes, it's a complex web of events, random chance woven together with old memories.

It was no different with them. They weren't special. They weren't fated for greatness. They weren't out to save the world. They weren't the Silver Gryphon. They were,... the other guys. They were the venture company next door, dirt poor and proud of it. But if any one thing or one person served as a thread that brought them together, it would have to be Lyneth's mother, Myriam.

Myriam was a Dryad. She lived in a section of the northern stretches of Foxmoor called the Ironwood Reach. She kept her grove and watched over the faerie-kin. Like most Dryads, she was not without her charms and not above using them to get her way. She was also, as they tend to be, completely without responsibility. She waylaid the occasional adventurer that wandered too far into her grove. And truth be known, she condemned more than one man to his death, though a pleasant death indeed to live out the rest of one's days seeing to the wanton desires of a Dryad.

Over the years, that perfect union finally happened and Myriam gave birth to a daughter. Normally, any girl child born to a Dryad, is itself a Dryad, no matter the father's race. Not so this time. Myriam gave birth to a half-fey. The other half, her father's half, Sylvisan. She named her Lyneth. And so Dryads from near and far sent their grigs and brownies and sprites to see this wondrous child. But others were interested as well. A Hag named Gahgatrix heard of the child and performed the ritual to see into the child's future. She saw that the child would bring death and destruction to the Dryads, and more specifically, the death of Myriam herself. But the Hag kept her visions close, telling only one young apprentice of the Coven of the Menea. Lyneth grew up, learning to fight and cast magic and survive in the wilds. At length, Lyneth's father died fighting Bugbears, and the young half-fey lost direction.

Some years later, a young half-elf wandered through Myriam's realm and was ensnared by her lusts. But unlike all those before him, Myriam saw in him something else. And though she charmed him and loved him for a year, time came when Lyneth began to ask questions. Lyneth and the young ranger, Charius by name, became fast friends, and he taught her even more things about the world outside. On one gryphon ride above the canopy of the forest, she saw the world beyond her grove and her wonderlust was born. Hoping to keep her at home, Myriam sent the half-elf away, but the damage had been done. At length, Lyneth's wanderings were noticed by a band of goblin mercenaries. Lyneth's stories of the power and wealth of her mother's realm did little to help the situation. They tracked her back to the grove and razed it to the ground. Myriam was captured, tortured for information about her treasure, and when she could supply no such wealth, she died in the conflagration.

Lyneth was found by an elven warpriestess, found hiding in the woods nearby, in shock and horror. When the warpriestess, Myribeth by name, got her out of the woods and down the road towards Lorvyn, Lyneth's curiosity and wonder overcame her grief and she finally spoke.

------------- Credits

------------- Thanks and please comment.