[AutisticWunderr]

Full Name: Ameng Englen

Age: 378

Class: Mage

Race: Elf
Subrace: Wood Elf

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Deity: Lucinda

Short Bio / Description:
Sitting cross-legged on the forest floor, I sat eating a half-roasted rabbit, thinking about things I haven’t thought of in a long time.


Another adventurer went thru my forest today. She was a mage, though I’ve never seen her before.... like that’s unusual. Most faces I see coming into the High Forest are nothing but faceless, unknown people. At least back in the forests, I feel much more secure. I hide a good distance from all people that come here, watching them from afar, wondering why people want to go to a place as secluded as this.

"My forest.” I mumbled. "Why cant humanity just leave me alone? Why do people have to stray so far from roads?" The way I said it to myself, it surprised me how poisonous my voice sounded. I’ve wanted nothing but seclusion after fate turned its back on me.

But that mage did something I haven’t felt in a long time. She casted a rather strong spell. From the distance I was from her when she cast it, I knew what I was from the change of the world’s fabric surrounding her. It was Stoneskin. It made me yearn in my heart to use my strong magiks again. After setting down the rabbit I was eating, I take out a well worn parchment from the ragged clothes I was wearing.

Cantrips..... the only spells I vowed ever to use again. Tracing my fingers down the torn edge of the parchment, I think back to the empty tree I put my book, Braveheart, and Mages Armour.... along with some other trinkets in for safe storage. After some time, I folded the parchment back up, and then put it in my pocket again.

I every time I think of where this parchment came from, it reminds me why I left civilization.

.....civilization, bah. I’ve blamed civilization for my sorrow, my emptiness. I think it all started with my parents. They were one of the few forest people that thought that life was better outside the canopies. With their sword and faith in hand, they walked outside into the world of humans, wanting to help anyone that needed it.

My family always was a family of paladins. At the tender age of thirty, my mother would let me play with her short sword. Heavy in my hand, it would make the stories my parent told me become more vivid. When I turned 50, I begged my parents to take me to battles if and when they ever happened. Sitting on the very far outskirts of the battlefields, Id watch in stunned silence. Then something happened that shook my father’s faith to its core...... the death, or rather murder, of my mother.

I remember it also. Sitting on top of a hill, watching my parents and about 100 other people fight of a horde of orcs and hob-goblins from the northern reaches, Id watch how people used tactics and strategies. After it was all over, they ran off the horde. After I knew that there was not anymore danger on the field, I ran to my father, which was not more than 200 feet from me. After hugging him, I ran off to find my mother, but I couldn’t find her. Neither could my father, for that matter. It wasn’t till the morning when I found her.

I stood there, ankle deep in water at the bottom of a ravine to the right of the battlefield, standing over my mother’s corpse. From the impressions of the mud around her, it looked that there was one than one humanoid that held her down, while another bashed in her breastplate with some type of blunt instrument, most likely a warhammer. One of the things that still haunt me to this day is that she had a very faint smile on her face. I’ve always wondered in the last moments of her life, in all the pain she was in, what went thru her mind to raise a smile to her face. I reached down, and removed her signet ring from her finger, then turned around to go find father...... but I don’t remember anything till I woke up the next day in my parents house.

Looking at the rabbit I was eating, it occurred to me that I’ve been reliving the past for awhile... the rabbit was cold. So I put it back on the small fire I made, hoping that the warming of my dinner would be faster than the length of time I would probably sit here, remembering things I shouldn’t.

After my mother’s death, my father put up his sword, but not his love for me. In fact, I think he loved me too much, if there was a way to do that. Not wanting the same fate to happen to me, he paid for me to be schooled in the art of spellcraft. He kept all weapons of steel away from me for a long time, saying that steel is what killed my mother. But it was too late for that... I’ve watched my mother and father use longswords for too long. I think the main reason I went against my father on that subject was that, in a way, it made me feel closer to my mother.

After I finally got to the point that I was able to do cantrips, I went back to my fathers house, grabbed my mothers longsword off the rack above the fireplace, then walked out into the night, trying to get away from the terrors of the past.

That was the night that I found my way here, brought here by a golden dragon that I never knew of or heard of before.

The smell of the rabbit broke me from the flood of memories that was pouring forth tonight. I took the rabbit off, and after taking a few bites from it, I took a drink from the gourd I had beside me full of water. I never really knew how hungry I was till I let the rabbit fully cook.

___________

Laying back after dinner, I pondered about how much my life has changed after meeting the great golden one.



I have been thru much over all the years I’ve been here. Joy... love.... friendship... loss....pain. I close my eyes, turning my head up to the stars, listening to the crickets playing their melody just out of the range of the small fire.

Pain.....

Every time I think of it, the memories rush into me like it was only yesterday. Two times have I left humanity. Reason because, both were caused by selfishness, spite, or a combination of them both.

The first was my daughter, Petrani. Just her name reminds me of when carried her back to Hlint on that fateful day, her body still smoldering in my arms. Born in a moment of chaos, I kept her away from everyone’s eyes except for a select few people, fearing for my child’s life. After she grew to the point of choosing her path in life, she picked what I feared the most. A paladin.

I got up, and started walking on a trail I’ve walked down several times before. I had no need for a torch or any type of light. I am a forest person, this is my homeland. Wiping a tear from my eye, I keep thinking about why I always do this when I think of her. Why does looking at it help me? After some time, I finally get to the hollow tree where I stored my non-used items. After taking out all my stuff, I look around the items, like I do every time, to make sure there was nothing missing. My Mages Armour was there, along with my Braveheart, and the bags I held all my trinkets, including a curious looking wooden bird-like apparatus. And my last gaze went upon my spellbook.

After looking at it for some time, I finally pick it up, and open the book to where my page divider was. All this stuff wasn’t the reason I came, the divider was the reason. It was a lock of her hair. I picked it up, and rubbed it against my cheek, which yet again, let my thoughts run rampant.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday. Following a rouge mage that stole some coin from the bank, myself, along with my daughter and several other friends were trying to get her caught in a position in which we could apprehend her. She was a wiry person, using Invisibility when we got too close.... which was, to tell the truth a tactic I’ve used also a lot. My daughter, brash as ever, didn’t wait for us to go as a group after the wench became invisible and rounded a corner in a canyon. This was her downfall, for the mage had a trap waiting for us around the bend. Hasted and in waiting, Petrani took the full impact of all three of the fireballs from that mage. All of us felt the wave of heat, then the screams from my daughter...but it was too late when we got to her. She was already dead.

Stooped down, grieving over my fallen daughter, I looked up finally to see that the wench was trying to get away from us again by Invis. I wonder how many people have actually had a situation in which nothing matters. There is no pain, there is no fear, and there is no emotion. And to tell the truth, I’ve never been like that again. Without thinking about personal safety or to tell the truth, the safety of everyone around me, I jumped up and ran towards her as fast as I could. I couldn’t let her get away, not after this. She will get her just reward, I vowed that. I had to get to her before she finished her spell and escape again. Running as fast as I could, I noticed I was about 10 feet from her when she was finishing her spell. Muttering a spell while I jumped, I touched her Right when she disappeared. She lit up brighter than any lantern you could buy. I did it! I touched her with my light spell!

A tear hitting my hand jostled me out of my thoughts. Looking at the drop on my hand, I wondered how many of these have I shed throughout the years I’ve been in these woods. I guess I partially blame myself for her death.... It should have been me, not her. No mother should ever watch the death of their children, its something that cannot be healed.

So after we gave back the gold to the banker, I tried to revive her, but to no avail. I.... I just grabbed my necessities, and wandered into the deepest forests I knew of. Here.

Putting her lock back into my book, I look at a small silver ring I had in a cloth satchel. A common looking ring, I turn it over to see the name of the person that gave it to me, which was the reason why I went into seclusion the second time. Elvor.

Elvor was the only human that truly got under my skin, and I started to care for. She was also one of the few people I actually trusted with my daughter when she was a baby. She was in a way the closest a human could get into being a sister.

During my first seclusion, she disappeared, and was not heard of in a long time. And in all honesty, I wouldn’t have known anything about if it wasn’t for Llu’s strange magical flying contraption I still keep with me. I got the message from one after about 6 months into my seclusion, asking if I knew where she might be at. Concerned for her, I grab what I brought with me and start looking for her. It took a long time, but I did find her. What she was trying to do during that entire time was to find a way home, and she ... found.... A way, she said thru the help of a mysterious stranger. The stranger asked her to get a staff of the magi, and give it to him, fore it was an ingredient to the portal he was trying to make. After finding one, we got back to the masked figure to send her home. Tears streaming from my eyes, we said our goodbyes, but before she left, she gave me this ring. The man then broke the staff, which almost killed me and the 2 other people that was there to see her passage. But the man disappeared before we were able to find out if the portal got her back to her home world....which is the reason I went back into seclusion.

“If I ever find you dark one, I will have my revenge.”, I said sporadically thru the tears in my eyes.

But then, sudden realization slapped me upside the head.

.... Throughout the years I’ve been in these woods, I lost everything I didn’t lose with just the death of my daughter and the unknown location of my human sister.

“I... cannot... continue living like this.... I need to go...back.”, I whispered to myself, knowing all too well that the fear of going back into humanity is sending chills down my spine. If I stay here, I would grow old by myself, keeping the wall up around my heart, to make sure no one hurt me ever again.

But is that the right way to live? My parents would have been ashamed at me, knowing that no matter how bad something happens, you would always have friends to help you go thru it. But I even alienated myself from them.

Putting all my stuff in my sheet I had, I walked over to the small fire, and tore a piece of empty parchment from one of the back pages, and started to write with a piece of charcoaled stick.


“Llu, This is Ameng. Several years ago, you contacted me with one of your contraptions, in order to send me a note. Well the favour has been returned tonight, for this note will be carried back by the same apparatus that was used so many years ago by you.

.... I’m coming home.

Ameng Englen”

Rolling up the sheet, I attach it to the apparatus, and then let the wooden bird toy go to go find its owner.

After letting it go, I grab what I brought with me, and started walking south, until I get to a road. And then, I’m going to Hlint.

I truly hope I am ready for the world. Or better yet, is the world ready for me again?

Only time will find out.