Castaway

As the old carriage trundled over the steep passes of the Grey Mountains, the odour of faded grandeur lingered in the nostrils of the half-sleeping stranger. Concealed in the rear trunk of the vehicle lay the female elf Yuviel, formerly of the great House Nedliril. Sitting and waiting there, the glorious yet tragic history of her people seemed now mirrored in her fate. Her forefathers had remained in the Old World after the frightful War of the Beard that led the rest of her people to their island home of Ulthuan to fight the menace of the corrupted Dark Elves. Yet the land that they had settled and that she had called home, hidden in the forests of the human kingdom of Bretonnia, seemed so distant now. The privacy of the woodland glades and vast enchantments had sheltered her from the outside world as a young student, but the call of the outside world that had so appealed to her in previous years had now led her here...

It was in the pursuit of wordliness that she fell from grace with her people. Having been dispatched to the great cities of the Empire to learn more of the ways of man, and to learn under the protection of the merchant houses of Ulthuan, Yuviel was enthralled by the ways of the human races - its alien forms of love, hate, knowledge and religion - so much so, that she would spend hours in the markets and lecture halls of the university-city of Nuln, absorbing the queer rituals of the human mind, and developing an understanding and compassion for humanity. It was this growing separation from the secluded merchants of the city that led to the first questioning of her loyalty. Further whispers and word of a blossoming relationship with a human lover led to her recall to the forests at the foothills of the great border mountains. Here her father Cirdale and the council of the forest elders considered her too corrupted to live amongst the lands of the Neldiril any longer, and it was they that cast her out of the woodland realm, cutting her off from the spirit of the forests, and casting the young elf into the rain and squalor of the Bretonnian countryside.

Save for the passing carriage of an Imperial Graf, her life outside of the protective spells of her people may have been a short one. A mob of peasants, angry at the elven resistance to their burning and slaughter in the forests to pay the feudal taxes imposed upon them by the absentee local earl, took exception to the presence of numerous elvish dignitaries on their lands and began a half-hearted and poorly-led assault on the expulsion committee. Whilst the lives of the high-born were never threatened in the skirmish, Yuviel dodged numerous blows from clubs and sweeping scythes to reach the safety of the passing carriage on the nearby road. Leaping aboard the moving vehicle with a grace that resembled that of her forefathers, she concealed herself in the safety of a luggage container, and lay her wet body against clothes and furs that spoke of faded-glory, her tears the closest things to companions on that long evening journey...

The carriage rolled on through the Grey Mountains and across the River Reik into the borders of the Empire itself. The land was so different to that in the outskirts of Nuln! The small agricultural villages that she had explored in better times were so charming, yet here in Middenland the isolated villages clung to the coast for dear life and the roads were lightly travelled. After many days on the road, a cry from the carriage driver informed the rich passengers of arrival at their destination. Creeping out of the box at the rear of the coach, Yuvial climbed to the rear of the vehicle, concealed from the mounted driver by the large bags of luggage lashed to the roof. Peeping over the mound of bags, Yuviel could scarcely see anything for the endless downpour of rain and the black skies under heavy cloud. Flashes of lightning and howling winds added to the apocalyptic feeling of the tempest, and brought memories of that painful night in the fields of Bretonnia flooding back. But as she squinted her eyes more, Yuviel was able to distinguish the outline of a road stretching into the distance. Or more accurately, a river of mud that twisted between the gnarled trees that lined the avenue. As she turned to her left, flashes of light from the gods illuminated the large cliffs along which they were perilously journeying, and made visible the swells that capped the large crashing waves out in the waters below.

Returning her attention to the road ahead, the elf could just see by the brightest of lightning bolts the outline of a town on the horizon. The buildings were low, and appeared crumbled against the onslaughts of the weather. It seemed just like the other towns that they had passed all along the roads of Middenland, but the small peak-like roofs and the flickering night-lights gave the town a sinister appearance, one that made Yuriel uneasy in her stomach. But as the cart rolled on, past several wayfarers laded with goods for what seemed to be a market-day, the elf sank back into the luggage at the rear of the carriage, and wondered if the skin-crawling dread of the place was actually just the onset of a wicked chill from the endless cold and rains that seemed to plague this forsaken coastline...