Adrad of Kimms Village
Adrad was a competent blacksmith, one content to spend the rest of his days hammering out horseshoes and nails. He had spent his youth in the service of the King. He had the strength to be a great man at arms, but he had a twisted leg, a souvenir of a childhood illness. Despite his strength and courage he would not be part of the line of battle. Instead he learned the forge, making horseshoes and repairing damaged armor for the army while it moved. He had little ambition to join the ranks of the great urban guilds and once his time in the army was done he retired to his home village, Kimms. The village was a small woodcutting community founded by a woodswoman named Jolly Kimms, a half breed. He had a family, raised children and eventually grandchildren.
But eventually things changed. The Old King passed away, and new lords and vassals rose and fell with the new King's coronoation. The problem arose when the new lord of the region, Valish son of Vaerlin, decided to change things. He tripled the taxes across the woodcutting regions, and increased the demand for levies for his armies. The valley villages produced excellent archers, hunters, trackers, and plenty of wood to fuel his ambitions. There was a revolt. Not the common sort of peasant revolt quickly and bloodily put down. The valley had a long tradition of service in the King's Army and there were many men with keen minds, and young men with strong arms and strong backs. The siege seemed a stalemate, the new Lord's troops were poorly motivated, and the defenders of the Valley were well armed, and well organized. An affront to the mounted men, to be unhorsed by peasants fighting in a forest.
Valish launched his evil plan, sending sick men into the Valley, to spread the zombie plague. The close knit defenders were decimated by the plague, and Adrad's house was not spared. His sons succumbed to the bites of their kin and his daughter was slain, and eaten by her own family. Adrad was choked with grief, he locked himself and a handful of survivors in the stone forge house and they tried to survive the storm. It did not go well, there was little to eat and a foraging run went poorly, several were bit. Adrad slew his own grandson after he was bitten by the infected child. He turned himself to his final task. He created the knife with the help of his surviving daughter, Kyra. She did much of the hard work, keeping the fire lit and providing Adrad with food and comfort while he worked and slowly weakened in the face of the undead poison seeping through him. The work took days, but Adrad was a bear of a man, made like the mountains. Once he was too weak to work the hammer, he directed Kyra to the hard work while he used his weakened hands to carve the pommel. Those knowing will recognize the face he made, it is none other than once Duke now Lord Valish, perishing from his own disease. Adrad perished with the knife almost complete. Kyra ended up intentionally quenching the hot blade in the guts of her beloved grandfather as he came at her, black gums and dead eyes.
She fled, leaving him and many others dead on the ground. She moved quickly, killing her undead friends and family with a bow before making it across the river, and out of the valley. She sought out something to finish the knife her grandfather made, and found that she could splinter large pieces of wood off of the gallows in the trade city of Darath. With some work, she polished the wood, and fit the handle around the metal core of the blade. The blade was finished, a macabre creation of incident and circumstance. There was no magical spell that went into its creation, nothing more than the cold and bitter dread of a man knowing he is to die soon. A man who has lost all that was dear to him in the ugliest sort of betrayal, a betrayal built upon a house of betrayals. The essence of death, the spirit of the zombie permeates the very materials the weapon is made of. Those who hold it know that it is a weapon of cold and bitter vengeance, the arrow fired after the archer was slain, the poison spilled into the larder.
for Dossta, because he asked nice
Go to Comment
Lifeforms (Constructed) (Cyberspace)