Backstory: Samantha Rose

Balduren, City of the Horse Lords, is built on a narrow peninsula that juts into the Great Sea. It boasts massive walls, decorated with the graven images of the animal which is highly revered there. It is also a port city, from which many set sail to the strange Land of Southrun. It boasts tens of thousands of residents, and is the home of the Great Warrior King Belasarus and of Drawmij the Wizard.


In days of old, Balduren boasted the protection of no fewer than three of the usurper gods. Even now, at this late date, the Churches of Balduren are not without decor and artifact more appropriate to that bygone age. They are a superstitious people with many strange customs mixed with their religion. These eccentricities are often accepted in the Southern Kingdoms, and Balduren is Southernmost amongst them. As the first line of defense against the Goblin Hordes, the Eight Kingdom's relies on the City to exercise dominion over the vast stretches of land called the South Mark.

As a military society, the ruler of the city is also its highest ranking general. Belasarus, called the Marks Marshall wields power there. In the Mark there is no ancestral claim upon the throne, though the same family has ruled it for three generations. In fact, the idea of a monarchy is a legal fiction to nominally comply with the Eight Kingdoms Pact that binds Balduren to the other seven kingdoms and to render fealty to the High King in Peakshadow.

It was into this city that Samantha Rose was born and orphaned and left to roam the streets alone. Her companions were urchins and beggers. As she grew older, she fought off and avoided the drunkards, rapists, and men of lesser repute who chased her through the streets and tried to force her into the oldest of professions. A maiden with raven black hair, emerald eyes, and naturally pale skin is a rare gem among the tanned and severe saddle wives of that country.

An herbalist eventually rescued Samantha from the streets. He made a poor living and offered her a still poorer one. Her work in exchange for a spare nail or two each day. It wasn't much, but it was enough to provided her with some means. So, Samantha was grateful to this patron and applied herself in menial tasks around his shop: gathering ingredients, boiling water, and delivering medicine. However, the herbalist was not without ulterior motive, either. For his wife was taken with the Black Hoof and when she finally died, he planned that Samantha would replace her. Though, for her part, Samantha could only see him as a sort of father that she had never had.

Samantha's only true friend in those days was a one-eyed crow that shared her meals and the occasional morsel of meat that the young girl was able to procure. But the crow had an eye for shiny things and it often returned to her with prizes and catches of its own. It brought small trinkets like silverware, jewelry and coins from destinations unknown. But they were sold with gratitude and once redeemed for coins found their way into both their bellies.

Once, near what Samantha surmised was her 13th Summer, the crow returned with brass bauble inscribed with strange glyphs across every inch its surface. For once, she did not sell the strange prize, for her belly was already full that day. Rather, she decided upon a whim to consider it a birthday gift from her friend, the crow. Thereafter, as the days went by, she and the crow continued their hand to mouth survival, but her nights were often spent in long hours of imagining what the writing upon the bauble said, and in what language. And some days, when her wonder was at its peak she even imagined that it grew warm in her grasp.

When the day came that the herbalist's wife had finally died, been mourned and properly buried, Samantha received another trinket. This time it was not from her friend the crow, but from her patron and would-be spouse. He proposed marriage to the maiden with a tarnished ring of silver. Samantha was horrified, and refused, but the old man would not be put off. He insisted and sternly. Somehow, he felt her hand had been promised to him, if only by his own imagination. He cajoled, he begged, he promised her his world; but when she would not acquiesce to his demands, he finally threatened. With anger in his eyes, the herbalist drew a knife. Menacing, he backed her into a corner of the shop and promised both their deaths if she would not relent.

Samantha, hand closed upon her bauble, was filled with pity for her patron. She begged him to stop his madness, but he would not hear her and so her pity turned to fear, and then when that had run its course, to unbridled malice. Meanwhile, the bauble in her hand had begun to grow hot with the change of her temperaments. Then, suddenly, in the space behind the herbalist a strange dark portal burned wide. There was nothing but inky darkness beyond its opening, but it was a fearfully hot darkness and a great blistering wave with a searing heat to match the one now scalding her palm, washed out across the room. The old man... her father... her suitor... turned slowly in fear. Two scaled arms, impossibly long and ending in razored claws, reached out of the opening, skewered his frail form, and slowly gathered him in.

Intuitively, Samantha realized that the object in her hand and the doorway before her were linked. Before the clawed arms could emerge again, perhaps this time for her, she flung the bauble through the black opening, heard laughter and watched it slowly close. Then several minutes passed in silence as Samantha, shaken and tearful, regained her composure. No sooner had she done so, than a pounding was heard upon the shop door.

She opened it to find one of her former employer's best and most generous customers standing without. This was Drawmij the Wizard, and though she knew it not, he had felt the emanations of the goings on that had occurred there. Looking around the shop he inquired after her master. Samantha feigned ignorance as he peered behind doors and into cabinets and through books and upon shelves. Though he did not say for what or for whom he was looking, Samantha was too afraid to volunteer what she knew.

When the wizard had concluded his search he peered long and hard at the girl before him. Samantha, uncowed, peered back. When their silent contest ran its course, Drawmij offered her the chance to become an adept and to learn a more disciplined and deliberate approach to life. He promised that with his help she could understand more about this and many worlds.

Samantha reluctantly agreed. She was fearful she would be discovered, but hopeful she might learn what sort of creature came forth from the portal, how it did so, and where her herbalist went. So began her three year period under the tutelage of Drawmij.

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