Noah Wildthorne

[Celtic8824]

(Background for those who do not know about the Moonshae Isles: The Moonshaes are broken into two human societies. The Ffolk are a somewhat peaceful group of people that live in the southern area of the isles. They focus on hunting, fishing, and farming, and worship Chauntea while they try to keep to themselves. They are reminiscent of Celtic clans. The Northlanders are an aggressive group of people that keep to the north. They raid the Ffolk on a somewhat regular basis, and are based on the Norse Vikings.)

How do you protect those you care about from yourself?

Living amongst my clan was not difficult for the average clansman. If you could carry your own weight, and at least be able to protect yourself, you were generally well received.

The hatred for the Northlanders was well understood. They came to our lands once every three or four fortnights. Their axes split bodies and stone alike as they pillaged, plundered, raped, and wreaked havoc upon our small village. It took everything my clan had to fend them off long enough to rebuild… just to have it happen all over again. This went on as long as anyone could remember.

I was born 21 years ago. My mother was a good hearted Ffolk woman, who worked harder than anyone should have had to. My father was a Northlander. My mother loved him so. She had told me that he wasn’t anything like the Northlanders who raided our village time and time again. He had once protected her from the unwanted advances of a Northlander in an invasion that had happened sometime in the past. Since that point, they had decided to meet each other in secret for years.
I know nothing about my father. From the moment that I was born, it was not difficult to realize that I was not a full-blooded Ffolk. My skin was much lighter than my mother’s, and instead of the dark brown hair that my people were born with… mine was tinted with the fiery red of my father’s hair. My deep blue eyes were also a sign that I was even more different from my fellow clansmen.

My mother and I were allowed to stay in the village, as the clan had just assumed that my father had taken advantage of my mother during one of their many raids. My mother got looked down upon often, but she was still a Ffolk, and was still treated as such by the village. I was not as lucky. I was a constant reminder to the Ffolk that the Northlander raids were always around the corner. As time went on, I began to take shape of my father’s people. Not nearly as big as a Northlander, but a decent amount larger than the Ffolk.

Nobody spoke to me. I was less than them. I was a cold-blooded bastard as far as they were concerned. A sickening reminder of a horrible deed, and I had the same blood inside me as the monsters that killed their fathers, their brothers, and their sons. That raped and enslaved their mothers, sisters, and daughters.

I just wanted people to talk to me. Someone to talk to, other than my mother. She cared for me so much, but it’s hard growing up knowing that you’re hated by an entire village. Even worse if it’s the village you live in.

As a child, I was beaten. Grown men would push me into the dirt, other children would throw stones in attempts to break my skin and bones. I didn’t dare fight back… they would exile me in half a heartbeat. I couldn’t live without my mother. She would tell me that these people were even more hurtful than the Northlanders sometimes… because at least the Northlanders were our enemy. We were a village of like people, and they treated me this way. Mother told me to train. To show them that they needed me. I had my father’s Northlander blood in me, I was practically bred to be a warrior. If I could prove to the village that they needed me, they would have no choice but to stop shunning me.

Every waking moment, I had a blade in my hands. I would practice against training dummies, and occasionally other boys. Whenever I trained with other boys, they would gang up on me from the beginning, bringing me to the ground before ending the training with a barrage of kicks to the face and back. After many years of training… my Northlander blood gave me the needed advantage, and by the time I was sixteen, even six or seven men teaming up on me couldn’t defeat me.

At the age of seventeen, the elders of the village had realized that although I was not fully one of them, I was a very valuable asset to the village. They gave me a position filled with much honor. I was to be the Highlander of the clan.

The Highlander was a warrior who showed more promise and strength than anyone in the clan. His duty was to protect the clan from invading Northlanders, and from unnaturally dangerous creatures, such as the Sahuagin that would occasionally attempt to raid the lands as well. I was given the armor that I wear to this day in honor of this title, and I was never more proud of myself.

After years of protecting the clan as the Highlander, nothing had changed. The people hated me all the same, even as I protected their children and their lands from invading Northlanders. No woman would speak to me, for fear of being ostracized from the community, and shunned by her family. My mother was still the only one who treated me as a person… the rest treated me as a rabid hound, chained to the village for their protection. Not to be played with, but only to be fed, and unleashed on attackers. At least the beatings had stopped.

During my twentieth year, the Northlanders were in the middle of a particularly aggressive attack. I cut down many of them, but eventually they made it past our small defenses and began to wreak havoc upon the women of the village. I tore through the village, cutting down every Northlander I passed with heavy strokes of my blade, watching them fall, wondering if any of them were my father that had accidentally caused so much strife in the life of my mother and I.

This is when it happened.

My mother was surrounded by Northlanders, all of them pushing and pulling her in each direction. One of them reached out and ripped her dress, and she reached up and slapped his face. Grinning, he hit her in the head with the flat of his axe, knocking her to the ground.

That’s all I remember.

When I came to, I was chained to the wall near my home, with my mother in tears. The Northlanders who had been hassling her lay on the ground in front of our home… at least… I think it was them. They were un-recognizable. Their bodies were mutilated, and heads separated from their necks. I looked to my mother with sadness and confusion in my eyes, and she just shook her head and embraced me as I was chained back. I looked over to see Ffolk men, bloodied and broken, but alive… barely.

It turns out, when I blacked out, I had slaughtered the men who were harming my mother, and my rage had frightened off most of the other attackers. But the Ffolk who attempted to calm me down were met with my fists, breaking their bodies and leaving them bloodied and bruised. It took six of the strongest men in my village to subdue me and chain me up.

My mother looked to me with tears in her eyes once more. She finally opened her mouth to speak. “Noah… the elders…” she seemed to barely be able to choke out the words, “… the elders have decided it’s time for you to leave the village.” She let more tears fall before finishing their reasoning. “They have decided that the Northlander blood in you has awoken. And though you protected us for many years, they feel as though it is unsafe for you to be here. I begged them to allow you to leave peacefully, instead of killing you. They accepted my offer.” She closed her eyes and began to sob into my chest.

“Please Noah… it’s the best thing for you.”

I simply closed my eyes, letting the tears fall. I had lived here for twenty years, and not a single person had treated me as a human. I was an animal to them, and they hated me for what my father was.

All I wanted was somebody to talk to me. To make me feel like a person. Nobody wanted to give me that here.

So why did it hurt so much to leave?

[Black Rider]

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