“Your ales,” the same surly wood elven maid that greeted them when they arrived announced with a scowl as she put the three tankards on the table, adding; “Your food will be out in a minute.” “Don’t forget the cream for the cat and the raw meat for the wolf,” Torryn ordered, even colder than his usual stoic tone. The inn only offered one food option, for which they were somewhat famous; hunters stew, and amalgamation of whatever game was brought down that day by local hunters, served in a bread-bowl. Then he inquired with feign curiosity; “How’s your mother?” But the tavern maid just scowled and stormed away without answering. The very reaction he was hoping to incite. As he turned his attention back to his two beautiful companions, Syn and Ytharra, the piercing looks from both made it clear that he was going to have to explain the tension between them. So, he took a deep draft off his ale and, with a heavy sigh, began; “Her name is Bhavana, if my mother hadn’t been disowned, she’d be my cousin. My mother was the eldest child of a house elder, hers was her younger sister. My mother was betrothed to the eldest son of an elder of house Moonglamaer. Their union would have joined the families in a mutually beneficial alliance, but more importantly, they were actually in love. They’d grown up together and were eager to spend their lives together. But just days before the wedding, my mother was raped by a stranger. A moon elf who attacked her as she walked home one night. He left her with child… with me. Elven tradition dictates that the bride of a high union must be pure and must be the eldest child, so the wedding was halted by the elders of both houses. To save the alliance, my mother was disowned, making her sister the eldest child and she was wed to my mother’s love, who was forbidden from even seeing her, while my mother was left to have and raise me alone. But the alliance didn’t hold, as Bhavana’s mother had an affair with her husband’s younger brother. The marriage was terminated in a massive scandal and both brothers where banished to distant lands. However, somehow everyone seems to have decided that my mother and I are responsible for the whole disaster… so both houses hate me!” Exchanging looks of shock and disbelief, both women sat in stunned silence. Syn knew that he used the name Audark to honor his mother but denounced any connection to the noble wood elven house. However, she had no idea how greatly that house had betrayed his mother… and him. While Ytharra hadn’t even known that much of his past. “How can they blame you!?!,” Syn finally found her voice, which was tainted with both sympathy and rage. “Your mother was the victim of rape… and then raped again by her family when they cast her out for the sake of a senseless tradition and a political alliance. How could any of that be her fault… or yours!?!” “Convenience,” he replied in his typically stoic tone; he knew that it was easier for both houses to blame the real victims, his mother and himself, than admit to their part in the farce, and he’d come to accept it… using their prejudice to fuel his drive to prove himself superior to them. Just then Bhavana returned with a tray laden with food to be met by looks of pure hostility from both of Torryn’s beautiful companions, which she couldn’t help but noticed, and leaving their stew, a saucer of milk for Nykademous and a large hunk of raw venison for Garuu, she quickly withdrew, feeling that had she remained a second longer she’d have been scorched to ash by the hate radiating from both women, even though he treated her with nothing but the cold indifference that met every member of the family.