Wherever the wind takes her (Sheren Aseph)

[Samy]

My story? Hmm, how should I start? I know my father, but I don't know anything about my mother.



My father was a slave laborer in a Rundeencamp on the edge of Qurth-Wood, south of the Lake of Steam in the south. He and the other slaves had to cut valuable wood in the cursed forest, collect rare and mostly poisonous herbs or hunt predators. And from time to time they served as expendable henchmen in the search for treasures in the ruins of the civilization that once died there - more precisely, to lose their lives in the traps and magical curses.



As I said before, I don't really know who my mother is. One day, as a small child, I was standing at the edge of the woods of the slave camp, where they found me and my father identified me as his daughter from a wooden amulet I wore around my neck. I don't know how I got there through the wilderness and my father only told me later that through the amulet he knew that I am his daughter and that my mother couldn't help but send me to him because I just couldn't go on could live with her - of all things in a slave camp of Rundeen. Since I had no memory of my mother, I have accepted that to this day, it means nothing to me because the life I remember only began here with my father.

[Samy]

From the start I was passed off as a boy and treated by my father. The slave masters probably wanted to sell me at first, but when they heard I came from the forest as a toddler, they just gave up their plan and I was able to stay with my father and grow up. Were they afraid of something related to me? I have those thoughts today, but not when I was a child. I lived half in the camp and half in the wilderness, free to go where I wanted. In the camp I brought water and food to my father and the other slaves who soon became my uncles, later I was sometimes sent into narrow passages and breaches in ruins where no adult could get through. I didn't know why, it was a kind of game and test of courage. And what I found there, I don't remember anymore.



In the wilderness I had my wild friends that only I could see and speak to. That reminds me, supposedly I had to really learn my father's language in the camp. Ah, yes, my wild friends.... My uncles smiled at them, but my father said they were my mother's friends and always stood by me in the woods. As a child, I never thought about it again, it was just there.
When I was maybe 8 or 9 it got harder and harder to avoid being recognized as a girl and finally it became apparent the day I lost my father and everything.

[Samy]

While bringing food to the slaves, I stumbled into one of the slave masters and was exposed. They immediately wanted to take me with them, but my father threw himself on the slave driver and when he called for reinforcements, my uncles joined the fight and it turned into a riot. Blood everywhere, screams, the clash of weapons. I can still see my father, covered in blood, grabbing my arm and dragging me to the edge of the forest. He said I had to flee, into the forest and run until my wild friends found me. I didn't want to but he yelled at me and slapped my face, I panicked! As I ran away crying, I heard his last words: "Flee, you shall be free... That's all I can give you, I'm sorry... run! Be free …. ...." I didn't hear the rest of his words anymore .... And I'll never hear them again.



I remember running as long as I could. Thorns and bark tore my feet, my arms and my face. I must have looked half dead and utterly exhausted when my wild friends found me. They healed my wounds and took me to a place that I believed at the time was deep in the heart of the forest.

[Samy]

At this point, I have to say right away, my subsequent memories are fuzzy, as if I can't really access them, as if something in my head is shielding them. My wild friends took me to a woman with green and blue skin. I can't remember her name... no, I can't get close to that memory. I know she took me in, she became my teacher. Was she my mother too? Strange but I think no. At first I asked for my father, wanted to go to him. But she said I had to get stronger first and what I didn't understand at the time: time was irrelevant.



In the months and years that followed, she taught me many things: fight, hunt, survive. She also taught me magic. I see blurry images of hunts, feasts, many other savage friends. So much that seems closed in my head today. Was i happy? This is the strangest thing: especially memories of my feelings are inaccessible to me, it seems like a story I read in a book, not like my own memories.



That's how I grew from being a child to being a grown woman. My last confused memories are of some kind of castle with high towers and a richly robed woman. I remember some feelings: cold as ice and at the same time protective, hot as the desert and yet refreshing. I can't describe it any other way, words fail here. It was a special day, all my wild friends were there, I know that. The High Lady spoke important words, something of a godness gift and burden to mortals, and I must now choose. Of rules and my own destiny. I remember being asked what I want to do now as an adult and I answered without hesitation, find and rescue my father.

[Samy]

What happened then? I was outfitted and my wild friends took me to the edge of the forest. I was back and without thinking further I ran in the direction of the slave camp. I could fight now, had my magic and my weapons, no one would stand in my way!



When I reached the camp it was deserted - no, it was just a ruin! In the place of our barracks tall trees now rose up to the clouds. Slave chains and bands I found in the tall grass warn rusty and worn down. On the stone remains of the old forge I found the piled up bones of people whose heads had been smashed in and ribs broken. They didn't wear slave bands, so it was the hated slave masters. I found no remains of anyone wearing slave rings or chains. On the former forge wall I found a sign that I didn't recognize: a roaring tiger with a fighting streak and a fish's tail. Whoever was part of that showing must have defeated the slave masters and taken everyone else with them. But I didn't find any other clues or signs.


Knowing my Wild Friends couldn't help me here, I set off and followed the only feature in the landscape that I knew by sight, the river flowing north where the Steaming Sea should be, of which I my uncles once told. I avoided the first hamlets and villages, watched them from the shelter of the wilderness and simply hoped to recognize people I knew, my father, my uncles. But no.



Only when I reached the shore of the sea and had no other choice did I approach a small village. I was invited according to the law of hospitality in this part of Faerun and, having little experience dealing with strangers, I freely told my story and what I was looking for. But then my curiosity turned to fear and distrust, and I had a lack of understanding and then downright despair: they knew the slave camp, it was stormed and destroyed by the tiger pirates almost three generations ago. Three lives! They slaves were freed, some even founded this village, others moved on to their homes. The families sometimes named their founders and I recognized these names as some of my uncles. Three lives almost? And I freely told that I had lived with strange wild creatures in the forest for over 80 years? And was apparently just about 20 years old? They asked if I was a Djinn, a Fey, or something. I didn't understand anything, my despair overwhelmed me: does that mean my father had grown old a long time ago and died at some point?



I saw the fear in people's eyes, but no one turned me away or harmed me. I sat in an old barn for a week trying to sort everything out. What would have become of me, I don't know. Because a couple started to take care of me. They were strangers here in the south, exiles from an area in the north they called the Heavy Coast. They were the ones who took me in and helped me not to sink into darkness and despair. Their names were Valerian and Laureline Aseph. An intrigue had led her to leave her homeland, all to protect the honor of her family and the children left behind. They never wanted to tell me much more, but they probably saw me as a substitute for their children who were about the same age. It was they who adopted me, as it were, and in their honor I bear their family name. They taught me the common language and how to manage life among so many other people. I think it's been my happiest two years so far.

[Samy]

Over time, I was also accepted in the village. I helped out where I could and soon they realized I could use my magic and combat training to help hunt or drive dangerous predators back into the wild. I only told my foster parents that I met my wild friends from time to time.

But fate is messy and so I lost my new parents by the same hand as my real father. A little over two years later, while on a tiger hunt lasting several days, I saw strange sails approaching the shore, sails marked with the Rundeen.



I immediately made my way back, but when I almost reached the village, I met a group of frightened village children and elders. They told of an attack by the slavers, were exhausted and some injured. I had to find a safe place for them before I could reach the village.



That made me late. The slavers had burned half the village and carried off many. My parents had been killed, but not without resistance. The survivors told me that both had fought the slavers with sword and magic, allowing the others to escape. My foster mother had set one of the slave ships on fire with a fireball and my foster father must have killed a dozen. I knew them as peaceful, warm people, I didn't know what they were capable of to protect themselves, the village... to protect me. Whatever had once dishonored them, they had given their lives here, for others!



We buried the dead, including my foster parents, but I didn't just want to mourn, I wanted revenge. Immediately after the burial nothing held me, followed the coast and the slave ships. A whole ten days I pursued them, they sailed close to the shore. When they anchored very close I swam over to their flagship at night. The surf was fierce and I couldn't have made it without the help of a wild friend - so they lived in the sea too. On board, I crept below decks to the slave cages. Naive and overconfident as I was, I thought I could free everyone and defeat all the slavers.



Of course I failed and was chained and hung between the sails. There I should slowly die of thirst and go crazy with the heat. But I was crazy, out of revenge. After two days, foreign sails appeared and followed the slave ships. Hectic broke out there and soon I realized that the foreign ships were pursuing the slave hunters. Half delirious, I cried out to all the gods I knew and my savage friends, bidding my life and blood if they would allow the pursuers to catch the slave ships. And then, suddenly, the wind died around the slave ships. He was suddenly gone, although a few hundred yards away I saw the seagulls sailing on the wind. Whether it was my pleading or the magic of the pursuers, I don't know.



As the foreign ships caught up and came closer, I recognized the symbol of the tiger. It had to be the Tiger Pirates who once liberated the camp I grew up in. And they were my salvation, for they attacked without hesitation and overwhelmed the slavers. All slaves and I were freed and saved.

When I regained my strength, I told my story to the half-elf pirate captain and crew, and some suggested that their fathers and grandfathers might have been involved in liberating the slave camp at Qurt Forest. But it was all so long ago that nobody could tell me anything about my father's whereabouts at the time.



I stayed with the Tiger Pirates for the next few years, taking revenge on the Rundeen- something for another evening of campfire stories. But the fate of my foster parents never let me go. Somewhere on this Heavy Coast they were considered traitors and their children and their descendants knew nothing of what they had done and sacrificed for the village. No, I couldn't leave it like that. They were dead, like my father, but their story lived on and needed to be told properly. Not by intrigue. Not without the heroic deed that had cost her her life. And I was the only one who can tell that ending and spread the memory of their.



So I traveled here to the Sword Coast, for one name has always stuck in my mind from the tales of their former home: Baldur Tor.

[Samy]

Journey to foreign shores ...

It's been two years since I made a promise at my foster parents' grave that I wouldn't let their story and their legacy end like this - in oblivion.



I still feel the pain - deep within me, never really going away. And I feel a burning desire for revenge against the Rundeen, who took away what I could call family for the second time.
For two years now I took revenge, boarding their slave ships as members of the Tiger-Pirates, ambushing their traders in the stinking, narrow streets of Calimport and other cities, or following their slave caravans like a hungry predator to sacrifice their blood and souls to Valkur or Sashelas .



After the “Ten Day of the Long Knives” we fished one of the few Harper survivors out of the water and gave her protection and safety from the Rundeen. She told us a lot about her alliance, its goals and its paths, but none of it was like mine. I only have what I feel in the here and now, because I don't have a real past. Maybe it would be different if I were just human or just Fey, basically I'm just myself.



My desire for revenge drove me relentlessly for those two years and then one day, without warning, the burning deep within me became just a cold rage that I could control.

We boarded another Runden slave ship and I fought against a well-armed sea mercenary. She was good, but I had luck on my side and so it was my blade that first penetrated her body and caused her to collapse. When she hit the hard plank her helmet came off and at first I thought I was looking at my reflection. Of course she wasn't me, but we looked very similar, were the same age and in her dying eyes I saw the same searching light for answers to my own fate as I see in myself in the mirror or the quiet sea. The battle raged on, but I could fight no more. She tried to say something, but the blood flowing from her mouth only allowed her to rattle. I knelt next to her and leaned towards her. I wanted to hear what else she had to say. It would be the last thing she could say in this world. Who was she? How was her name? What was her story? What goals, what wishes? But I couldn't understand a single word anymore. She died in my arms and I had killed her.

She put her fingers to her mouth, dipped them in her own blood and tried to write something on my cheek with them. Later my companions told me that they found me bending over the dead woman and saying over and over again: “What is your name?” What is your name?"



Whatever she tried to draw or drew on my cheek, by the time I was finally able to think clearly again, it was long gone. But sometimes, when I look tired in the mirror in the evening, I see something red there, signs, maybe letters. Whenever I focus on them, they fade, I can only see them out of the corner of my eye, for a moment, a heartbeat. But I know there's something there. A message, a name? Blood red, but invisible as long as I am alive.



That day, my burning revenge turned into a flame of ice deep within me that I learned to control.

((Music suggestion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2sbrAMYDGo ))