Lore to Maigka - The Candid Response
Okay folks, I was just trying to do a bit on the lore of my latest champion concept. See more about that here
http://i.imgur.com/768kCiR.png
Anyway... I just kinda started writing and it turned out to be quite ... MUCH... xD (A summary is in the comments.) So I figured I could just start a new thread for it and give you guys something to read. I actually changed her personality quite a bit in contrast to the first concept to fit with the rest of the story and there's still some work to be done on how I link the past to the present buuuut... In this thread I'd just like to hear your thoughts on the story so far. So if you are a dedicated reader, feel free to have a go at it and tell me what you think.
Maigka was a girl like all the others, living in the harsh environment of the Freljord.She often left the village to go on a hunt with the elderly men and whenever she did they were gone for days. Now when you think summer in the Freljord is hard, then you've probably never been there in the dark days of winter. One winter was escpecially cruel and the food supplies were running low. Meanwhile Maigka sat at the bedding of her sister who caught a terrible flu like half the rest of the village. Their village's elder, an old woman bent by the years, could not help her. Her supplies on herbs and ointments had been exhausted for quite a while. The gods made the elder decide between the lives of children and the lives of the men who kept their village alive and Maigka resented them for it with all her heart. When her sisters condition worsened, she asked the elder if there really was nothing to be done. She saw the desperation in Maigka's eyes but she could only tell her the same thing as the last time and the time before: "I need the right herbs to help her but they are covered by meters of snow and ice. Even if they were not, I would need to collect them myself, since you wouldn't know what to look for and I cannot leave the village at this time. I cannot give you a sample either. All supplies are gone, there's nothing left so there is nothing I can do for you and nothing you can do to help her." When Maigka turned to leave the hut she heard the elder mutter "In my days people were not so fragile. A good rabbit stock and they were as good as new." Maigka closed the door and did not hear the rest of her muttering: "Back in my days the winters were not as harsh though and I've never seen such a pandemic spread of flu either..." Maigka was already running back to her own hut. "A rabbit stock, that's all? Well, I can catch a rabbit or three. I've done that many times before!" She kissed her mother goodbye who was sleeping at her sisters bedding to watch over her and hurriedly left the village when the sun was just starting to set. "Perfect", she thought, "dusk is the best time for a rabbit hunt. That's what Ol' man Jenk always says." Yet, before long it was dark, a pitch black night and Maigka could barely see the trees around her. Before long she had to admit that she was lost. Worse than that, she was terribly cold. While trying to find her way back to the village she heard a voice. It was singing, singing some a tune in old and long forgotten words and Maigka couldn't catch their meaning. Shortly after a second voice set in. With no other choice, Maigka decided to follow the song. Maybe there was some shelter for her for the night at least. The voices lured to the edge of the forest. Maigka paused for a moment. While she could barely see it in the darkest of the night, the could feel it all the more when she couldn't do so under the protection of the trees: a snowstorm and a vile one on top of it. She panicked. Going back in the forest would mean her death. She would be frozen come morning but going through the storm did not seem like much of a better choice. Yet, Maigka had to try. If there is no way back then the only way to go is foreward. The voices came clear and louder than before. Today Maigka would always wonder why she didn't find it strange that two people singing could easily drown out one of the most terrible snowstorms in Freljords history. At that time she didn't wonder, she just kept walking, stumbling through the white, forward, always forward. After a while she began to notice that the slope of the ground below her feet started to rise. The voices had lured her on an old mountain path. An hour passed, then two. Her limbs had been numb for quite some time now. Maigka could barely take another step. Suddenly she stood in front of a shadow, round and barely as tall as her, darker than the night itselt but two tiny eyes appeared to be staring at her from it. When she stretched her arm, there was nothing there and the shadow did not flinch. Confused she reached for the eyes and that was when she realized that the shadow was actually the entrance to a cave and the eyes were two glowing things far far in its back. The voices were definately coming from this cave so she entered. Well, she would have entered anyway. Nothing would have made her walk past this cave and out in that storm again. The two eye like lights came closer and closer. When she found their origin she was so deep in the cave that the storm outside was barely audible. Having reaches the end of the cave the tunnel widened a bit and she looked around for whoever was singing that tune but she couldn't find anyone. There were just two star shaped pieces of ice leaning against a stand at the end of the tunnel. She touched them and jumped back. The ice was WARM. Warm like a summer's day was what she first thought but one of the voices interupted its singing to answer her thought: "Warm like the blood of our enemies, my dear." and "Warm like your own blood", added the other, then they started singing again. Maigka turned around and fled the cave or at least she tried. When she reached the exit of the tunnel or at least the point where the exit was, she ran into a hard, cold wall. She had been snowed in or maybe an avalanche covered the entrance while she had been inside. With no other way to go she slowly walked back to where the tunnel widened up, looking for a corner that would trap her body's heat a bit. She sat down and curled up, shaking, with chattering teeth. "It's warmer over here with us, my dear" said the first voice in between two verses. "You are not going to get out of here on your own." followed the second. Maigka ignored them. "It's a curse. A curse of all things. But I shall not give in to them." She tried to fight the sleep back. Falling asleep in the cold is certain death is what the huntsmen always said. "But... just a little couldn't hurt, now could it? Just for a few minutes", she mumbled right before the exhaustion got the better of her.
When she woke up, she was warm. Warmer than she had ever felt in her entire life. Her body felt like it was burning but it was a pleasant feeling. She looked around and saw the tunnel leading to the exit in front of her, lit by the two pieces of i... Where were the ice stars? She had curled up so that she could have kept an eye on them but they were gone... No... she was not where she was before. She sat up and felt a smooth stone in her back. The stand! She looked down and saw that she was sitting right next to the two stars. One to each of her sides. "I hope you slept well, my dear", said the voice coming from the right. "We kept you warm the whole time", whispered the other from the left. "Now it's your turn to repay the favor", they said together. Maigka looked down on herself and found that the stars where clinging to her forearms with the help of vambraces. Hectically she tried to remove them. "Oh no my dear. We saved your life and now it is your turn to repay us. We will not let go of you until you did what we ask." "And what do you want from me?" "Oh, this and that. We don't know yet. We shall see in the years to come", answered the stars. Maigka was too confused to answer them, so she decided to head for the exit first. It was still blocked but when she layed her hand on the wall of snow and ice she heard a rumbling from outside and within seconds the barrier was gone and the warm summer's sun was shining in her face. "... the summer's sun? How is that possible? It is the middle of winter!" "You have been in there for a while, dear", answered the star on her right arm. "You trapped me in there for half a year?!", Maigka panically asked. "First of all, we did not trap you inside", said the left star, "It was just the time you needed to recover and we have just so little to give to help you." - "And secondly, you might have been in there for a bit longer than just a few months, my dear", added the other voice. "How much longer?", Maigka asked. "Thirty years, maybe fourty? Surely no longer than fifty" was the answer she received. Fifty years! "You must be joking. I don't feel a day older than when I fell asleep." - "And you don't look a day older either, dear, have a look for yourself. But you have slept for at least 4 decades, that's the truth." - " 'Have a look.' How am I supposed to do that here?" - "The darkness of the cave may have conceiled it but now you should be able to see what we truely are", both voices answered simultaneously. Confused, Maigka raised her forearm. What she thought were stars were actually Mirrors with five pointy ends and... sharp edges? They were clear as if they had just been polished. A single snowflake tumbled down on the mirror and it simply evaporated into thin air without leaving a trace of its former existence. She raised her arm a bit more to look at her own face inside the mirror. She really looked like she did on the day before she went in that cave. "They have to be lying. That's gotta be it", she thought to herself before she recalled that the mirrors read her thoughts earlier already but they remained silent for now. "Well, it sure is going to be a pain to change my clothes with you attached to me all the time", she said instead, trying to fake a self-confident attitude. "Oh, don't worry about that, dear", the right mirror replied. Then it folded up until the tips of the star overlapped each other. They were just about as broad as her forearm. A swift sliding noise from her left told her that the other mirror was doing the same. "Hey, that's convenient!" - "Now noone will ever know", was the answer and then the mirrors fell silent. Maigka began to descent from the mountain, strangely enough she had no trouble at all to find her way back to where her village was but was she found were ruins. "Fifty years", she mumbled. She wandered around between what had been her home for 17 years. She found her hut or what was left of it. Her sisters bed was still there, covered under a thin coat of snow and moldy where the snow did not cover it. She called for her sister before she realized how meaningless that attempt was but to her surprise someone answered. Someone other than the blades of warm ice on her arms. "Who's there?" An old man, going by the voice. She left the hut and saw him coming around the corner. He froze as if he saw a ghost then he shook his head saldy. "That's impossible, she's been dead for almost fifty years", he murmured. "What happened to this village?", Maigka asked him. "The flu, bandits, a fire, not much that didn't happen actually." - "Would you tell me more about it?", she inquired. And so he told her how he had lived here decades ago, when a terrible desease had most of the villagers bedridden. He had been a Hunter, barely in his twenties back then. "One night", he told her, "a bandit raid came up the road but not to ransack the settlement. The bandit leader's son was sick and he was asking for help, begging the elder on his knees for medicine but she told him she had none to give to him. The leader felt cheated by her and threatened that he would burn down the village if she kept refusing to help him but she repeated that there was nothing she could do. So the bandit ordered his men to torch a hut to show his determination. The elder stood and watched them do their work, watched the home of her neighbour catch fire and again insisted that she had nothing to give. The leader fell into a frenzy and had his men light every hut in the village on fire. Some villagers tried to fight back but they were slaughtered and tossed aside. Most of the others did not wait until their homes went down in the flames. They took what little they were allowed to carry and fled for the next village. The bandits let them pass. Only the elder's hut was left and the bandit leader approached it with a torch in the hand himself. I hid behind the fence that night to watch what would happen next, when-", the man paused in his story, trying to find the words to continue. "-When our elder suddenly told the bandit leader to wait and vanished in her hut. When she came out again, she was holding a phial and I could barely believe my eyes. It was the very same phial she already used to treat my father's flu that winter and there was still some in it, I could clearly see it in the light of the fire." He took another pause and shook his head. "There was no reason for the village to be burned to the ground if there was that much left. She even refused to treat some of the sick people long before the bandit raid, saying that there was nothing left to treat them with." Maigka felt a sting in the palms of her hands and when she looked down she saw that she was clenching her fists so tightly that they started to bleed. If there was medicine left there had been no reason for her to leave the village. There had been no reason to be stuck in a cave for decades. She could have been here when the bandits attacked, could have been with her family, with her beloved sister... "The bandit leader took the phial from our elder, seemingly unsure whether he should trust her or not before he apparently decided that he had no choice. Their raid left the village in a hurry and I turned to catch up to the others and tell them what I had learned. I didn't take more than a few steps when I heard a fizzling sounds behind me and when I looked back I saw the elder's hut vanishing. The whole hut, with her inside. It was witchcraft, I'm telling you. I don't know if she saw me and knew she had to flee because we would come back for her, but she just left. POOF, it's the truth. Maybe she is still out there somewhere. Witches are said to be quite the persistent bunch." "Don't you worry", Maigka replied, "If she's still out there, then I shall find her..."
(Took me approximately 2 hours. So apologies if it aint perfect yet.)
