Simmen

Handle: DhaiMon
Email address: fohs@gmx.de
== Description ==
Age: Around 16
Gender: Male
Appearance: About 6' tall and pale, the word that comes to mind to describe Simmen is unkempt: He doesn't seem to care overly much about his wildly growing, darkish hair and beginnings of what might pass for a beard, and his clothes mostly got a worn look in short order. Despite his size, he is gaunt, even weakly, and the permanent expression of distance and worry in his face and dark green eyes just do not belong on one supposedly so young.
Place of Raising: Horn's End, a flyspeck village on the southern slopes of the Black Hills, most notable for an ancient skull's top sprouting horns erected on a pole in the middle of the village as well as for its inn, The Mountain Breeze, which is frequently traversed by travellers from the nearby Tower road. Despite the location of Horn's End, its' inhabitants are known to be more suspicious and close-mouthed around strangers than even the usual run of rural folk.
== History ==
Simmen was brought up an orphan, and from the very beginning he got to feel it: Rumour and gossip in the village had it that he turned up as an infant on the doorsteps of the Village Crone's home when a blizzard raged, streaked by lightning and booming with thunder, something perceived to be an ill omen among the villagers heralding hardship, lack of game and failing crops. And indeed it seemed as though events turned to the worse from then on, as many believed: In the following years game got ever scarcer, the piteous fields of the village yielded less and less and word of tumult in the world, worse than ever before, reached Horn's End more frequently, talk of False Dragons, disastrous wars raging in distant lands, horrors and madness unleashed everywhere. Truly, the Ladies of the Storms' ire had been evoked, and the Father of the Night's shadows lengthened. The Creator meant to put them to the test, but for what?
Pinned as the one responsible for all the ill that had befallen the villager's world, he was shunned by most and a favorite target for bullying youths. In addition to that, he was sickly as a child and simply no good for work in the field and woodcraft. The only people in Horn's End that would look after him were the Crone Sandr, who would try to prevent the worst transgressions against him, and the innkeeper, Jos, who at Sandr's "suggestion" grudgingly took him in as a scullion. Even though Jos let Simmen feel that he would rather not have him and Sandr seemed to look after him exclusively for duty's sake, he started to see in both of them the parents he never had.
Unsurprisingly, Simmen grew more and more used to being isolated and started to prefer solitude above the company of the other village youths that mostly would either mock and insult him or, in rare cases, offer sympathies and vainly try to "cheer him up". When he was not buried into washing dishes, busy fetching ingredients or daydreaming about the stories he snatched up, he would try and practice the shortbow in the inn's backyard. He had aquired the bow on his one and only ranging into the woods when the Elder's Circle probed for his abilites, and was allowed to keep it after he had asked for it and the Crone, for some reason, backed him up. A bow fit for a child really, and as the years passed and he grew ever taller some boys would regularly gather to make fun of him right there and then. Still, it served to distract Simen from the harsh realities, and he could lose himself in a sense of calm, solely concentrating on his mark.
Handling a bow too feeble for him was not the only oddity he was remarked for: Even though mostly he would work rather ineffectively, at times he finished cleaning the piles of plate in front of him in surprisingly good time, and sometimes would run errands through a downpour without coming down with the cold as he usually did, without even a cloak on himself. On another instant, he was staring intently on a plain bookcover, faded by age, looming out of a peddler's wagon. When asked what the matter were, he asked what that book, "The Shifting Border", was all about. The only people in the village able to read were the innkeeper's family as well as the Crone and her apprentices, and they never bothered to teach anyone else their letters, as there was "no need to". Reluctantly, Jos permitted Simmen access to his miniature collection of books when it became apparent that Simmen truly could make sense of the written word, and the village youths started to nickname him "scarecrow scholar"- mostly not merely meant as a joke, though.
It was some time close to his supposedly 16th name day that he would abandon the village forever, never turning back: While he was practicing the bow, the expected mob of bullies arrived. They just stared at him while he worked the bow, utterly ignoring them. Simen knew them all, if not by their names- he was no real good at remembering names -then by their looks. Tmas, a broad-shouldered fellow, was the one most prominent among them, the one most notorious about bullying him, and there was heat in his gaze, hot as the furnace he worked, as his eyes rested on Simen, silently accusing him of yet another crime or ill he was surely responsible for. And then, the silence broke.
As Simmen nocked another arrow to loose at his marking on the wall, they started to tell one another of this and that: The fields would hardly yield enough to provide for everyone, and that with winter approaching. The hunting parties had returned, and there was as good as no game around. The few merchants that still bothered to stop at the village instead of rushing to their destination told tales of imminent doom and chaos, of the Dragon's return and the Last Battle on the horizon. All the while, they looked accusingly at Simmen, who did his to pretend that they were not there at all.
Then, Tmas stepped forward, planted himself in front of Simmen when he was reaching for another arrow he had planted into the ground. "You even listening, scarecrow?" Tmas' voice literally pulsed with threat.
Simmen tried to look through him, not acknowledge him.
"All that's your fault. Ever since you crawled t' our doorsteps you have brought misery to us. Winters been hard these last years, and it'll dead sure be even harder this time 'round. You don' scare 'em crows 'way, you draw 'em t' us 's what you do! I sure don' see why you feeble weaklin' still walk aroun', while good Zamel died last year. You're no good for a one here, and the Pit take the Crone!"
Simmen tried to look anywhere but at Tmas. The blacksmith's apprentice then grabbed Simmen's chin, forcing Simen to look at him.
"No idea where you been spawned, crow." His voice lowered, at the same time dripping with ever more contempt. "For all I can see some tavern wench and a lame drunkard did it, and with no wanting it."
Inside Simmen, something...cracked. He had heard as bad and worse before, but somehow, he would not simply let it pass this time. This time, he would...strike...back.
He tried to free himself from Tmas' grip- tried, and, surprisingly, succeeded, even violently pushing him back. Tmas landed sprawled on the ground, his face showing murder and surprise at once. He pushed himself up again, and launched himself at Simmen's throat.
Instinctively, Simmen nocked an arrow. Before he loosed, however, a...gust...threw Tmas back, sending him to the floor. Bones cracked.
Tmas' eyes stared at the sky, with a now glazing look of baffled surprise. It all seemed to have gone by so fast that not a one of Tmas' friends could make a move, and now they just stood where they were, stared, eyes wide.
At first, Simmen was numb with shock. Then, he ran, bow and arrow still clutched in hand and quiver at his hip. He ran past Jos who was shouting to know what had happened, Sandr who tried to intervene him and ask what the matter were, others who stared at him, called after him. Excepting the Crone, noone so much as tried to block his way. He did not heed any of it.
He ran, past Horn's End's boundaries, ran, into the woods surrounding the village, without any sense of direction, ran untill he collapsed to the ground, left with but one thought: It was not chance that had killed Tmas. It was him. Him.
Sleep took him, and with it came nightmares, of madmen killing people by merely pointing at them, breaking the earth open, calling down thunder and lightning to dwarf all the storms that would ever be. And every single one of them had Simmen's face.
The next day, Simmen just wanted to die. But something made him keep going, made him try and pick up what food the forest offered, made him take aim and loose arrows at animals too old and slow to try and escape the pathetic range of his toy bow.
After what seemed years, he finally came upon a village located beside the Tower road. There, what seemed to be the whole village were gathered around the center where a small troupe of black coated men, some of them sporting weird pins on their collars, seemed to make a grand speech, waving and gesticulating around. One of them, with a silver sword and a snake-like creature at his throat, boomed with a voice too loud for any human: "Who of you would step forward to serve the Lord Dragon?"
It was the last thing Simmen wanted to do, and the only thing left to him. Wriggling through the crowd, he stepped forward.
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