A.N.- Well, I was looking around and noticed that people have these things called disclaimers. So I decided that for legal security I might as well slap one together. Also, I've decided to post any extra thoughts I have about my story and/or the newest chapter in my profile.
Disclaimer- I do not own Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons and Dragons game, obviously because it is Wizards of the Coast's and not Wallshadow's Dungeons and Dragons game. That basically means that most of the equipment, weapons, armor, etc. etc. belong to Wizards of the Coast. That also means that I made these characters using rules and templates taken from the Dungeons and Dragons game. This means that I don't own the rules made to make characters, play the game, or anything to do with miniatures for that matter either. I do own, to the best of my knowledge, the world of Salidemthía and the Palané Republic as well as a few other places I'll introduce you to as I continue to write. While it's not quite as big and complex as I would like it to be because I haven't had time to drain all the ideas out of my ears, I would at least appreciate it if you refrained from using it as a "campaign setting" without asking me first. I don't think that it'd be a problem for me to let you use it, unless, of coarse, I'm either in a really, really, really bad mood or I let you use it before and you just went and destroyed it. Sure, I think that that will actually happen, but this is for legal security, so I might as well have all my bases covered.
Chapter One
My birth-given name is Amelia Gabriela Stontch but I am better known by my alias, Beast. I'm sure you're expecting me to be some kind of horrible monster. Honesetly, I can't tell you if you're right, because I'm no sure myself.
I can not remember any of my childhood before the age of twelve. It was at the age of ten that I was abandoned on the streets of Estella. The only two ways to describe my abandonment are purposeful and ruthless. Unless you've been to Estella, that is before the town was destroyed, you'd probably not understand the reason for those words. You see, it was not by a mere accident that I was abandoned; it was not that I was simply lost.
Estella was a small town on the edge of old Contran Forest. It was not often visited except for the merchants and travelers who used the Trans Baizine-Kotano Caravan. It was no more than a stop over between the two cities. There were no real natural resources around it either. The only potential one was Contran Forest, except that it always seemed to be in the process of dieing and the local people had their superstitions about the place. The few homes that stood around were all in a need to be repaired. The truth is that the few stores and inns would have made better permanent living quarters than the houses of those who worked in them.
This is the place that my memory starts. I had been naïve then. Upon realizing that my parents were gone I smuggled aboard a caravan that was heading north to Baizine. That's where my parents had told me that we were heading. It was a long ride and I nearly got caught a couple of times. I finally made my inhabitance for the trip the bottom of the food wagon. After three days we finally arrived at Baizine.
The only thing that kept Baizine from being a failure like Estella was the fact that it was the first city to be founded in the Salidemthian Sect and therefore holds special historical meaning. It was ventured to by scholars and bards who were interested in information of the past. Because of its large mass of tourism many stores popped up and it soon housed the first university in the Salidemthian Sect. The only other town that has a university is the capital of Salidemthia, Pobrax, which is second in prominence to Raisin's.
I searched the city for many days. I kept myself fed by snatching left over food off of tables at one of the smaller inns while no one was watching. It wasn't the best way to live, but I didn't want to risk asking anybody for food that would send me to the local sheriff. I may have been naïve but not completely stupid.
The realization that I had been truly abandoned dawned on me slowly. It didn't strike suddenly; if it had I may have been in enough despair to have turned myself in to an orphanage. That would have been the end of me. I would have grown up in the orphanage being taught right from wrong and eventually they'd kick me out and I'd work as clerk or apprentice priest somewhere. I would have led a monotonous life till the day I died. But it didn't happen that way. I simply started searching for my parents less and less and eventually not at all. I was then at home on the streets, taking what I could through luck. I made enough money to buy food and a cloak for when it was cold in the barns that I slept in. For the next two years my life seemed to slip me by and I continued to thieve for my life. It became a daily thing, like a job really.
But soon after the second year of this I grew tired of it all and decided I'd go out to find myself something more fulfilling to do. Because I had nobody to tell me what to do I truly felt my freedom, though I lacked comfort. But that was okay because life promised to be long and full of adventures to be taken.
