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My name is Wander. That’s it. Just Wander. If my mother and father gave me something else, they didn’t stick around long enough to tell anyone. I’m an orphan. I guess I had folks but… You see I’m a half-elf. Product of an elf and human union. Which was which? Does it matter? All that matters is that I am half of two things and a whole of none, welcome nowhere. I was raised by Reverend Whelock at a school for orphans. We called it School of the Unwanted. Reverend Whelock was a decent man, treated us well and taught us scriptures from the Good Book. It was him that named me Wander. I was never still for long then or now. At 14 I left the school. By 16 I had learned my way around the wilderness and backwoods, and learned hard lessons about the world that Reverend Whelock never taught me. By 17 Colonel Jessup found me, with an empty belly and a loaded gun. And I was just what he was looking for. By 20 I was a granite hard and glacier cold killer. So yes I fought in the War. Only I was on the wrong side. We lost, but I’m not too sorry about that. When I joined with Col Jessup and his band of raiders I didn’t know or care about the issue of slavery, or the mining industry, dwarven emancipation or Federal unity. I just wanted to fight. And I got exactly what I wanted. Colonel Jessup had a hundred young men like me. Yes I killed people. You mean men, you ask? No, people, and livestock, and game and trees and anything else that God had created we destroyed. We rode as irregulars. Raiding towns and supply lines. We killed innocents, we did evil. We turned our faces from God and did the Devil’s work. Then I saw what it was all about. We found a group of dwarven families escaped from a slave colony. Col Jessup ordered them rounded up and burned alive. We tried to stop it. Me and my two best friends Pack and Caleb made a stand. I shot the Col, but we had to make a run for it. We left the slaves behind. No, I don’t know what happened to them. What I do know is that we were done with the Rebellion, and the Federation wanted us hung. So we ran and hid and spent the rest of the War doing what we could. After the War? When the Grand Uprising had been put down and the Federation “restored order?” Well since then I stay out here on the edges. Out where decent folks can’t get protection from a defeated rebellion or Federal soldiers. I ride out here and I use my gun to help as best I can. I still fight, it’s all I know. But now I try to use what I know to help those that need helping and deal with those who need it. Reverend Whelock had a saying “lions keep the leopards tame.” So I stay a lion, and I fight the orcs, and trolls, goblins and just bad people that would try to prey on the weak. Is it enough? Only God knows. But I try. Posts: 3 | Registered: Feb 2009
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