Hel-i-Fas [ the Heartbreaker ] (1)

Characters within the world of

What the Sister Moons See

[ By Brian G. Coverley ]

(Inspired from Wizards of the Coast’s, Dungeons & Dragons' Forgotten Realms and other, published works)

1) Hél-i-Fás Grimleaf [ aka the Heartbreaker, Disgraced among the Graced; the Betrayers’ Vex . . . the Shadow of If; the Shadow of Hope <<---not yet though; but in future . . .  Perhaps ]  a freewheeling, acrobatic rogue and exceptional assassin; a mercenary; a venal 'Weaver' (Illusionist) …. with an uncanny talent with, and penchant for shadows and darkness 

*PLEASE NOTE:
"Grimleaf … Heartbreaker … Disgraced among the Graced … The Betrayers’ Vex; The Shadow of If; The Shadow of Hope" are monikers/titles a fortune-teller, troubadour~bard and prostitute (who seemed to have a fondness for him) disclosed to Hél-i-Fás, when she read his palms . . .   

She said they would come to him and what they'll mean will be apparent to him "one day" ... and that *realms* may come to know him by them ... 

To which he heartily laughed with enthusiastic disbelief (and more-than-a-little derision) . . .  

Often playing the cad and lout, and almost-always venomously irreverent to nearly anything bespeaking of propriety, virtue and piety --- especially piety --- it’s hard to believe that Hél-i-Fás has some meaningful destiny involving the world and perhaps its deliverance. But among all mortal kind, the gods are renowned for at least one trait... their unparalleled sense of irony. 

 Hél-i-Fás was thrown into this world, with an initial fate that most would likely call 'cursed'. He was the only son of an interracial [inter-species] marriage, within a region of the world where such couplings are rare and heavily looked down upon, between a man and a Hi’Sae’Yu noblewoman. The region of the world they lived in, had long lost sight of the value [ the blessings ] in interracial union and racial intermixture. His family were shunned by both their insular communities for engaging in such ‘rash’ and purportedly ‘ignoble’ and 'disgusting' behavior. 

That, in of itself, was not the "cursed fate". It was the calamity that almost immediately arrived thereafter, and all that would follow. In retrospect, Hél-i-Fás (and any other knowing his tale) has made the presumption that his life be some cruel joke --- not-so-much at his expense, per se, but simply a joke: a grand, cosmic joke . . .   

Unbeknownst to the victims (but really the unleash from long and quiet preparation), an invasion-force of thousands Twisted Dragon-Kin with tens of thousands of their allies, the equally malignant the Shadow-Fae Fiends -- both coordinated and directed by The Betrayers* -- swept across the region. He was barely older than toddle-kin (what we’d call a toddler). Desperately the longtime segregated, insular communities of human and "Graced" [ Elves ] formed a slapdash alliance and attempted counterattack . . .  but it was feckless. 

Jarom-Krokus, Hél-i-Fás' human father perished along with thousands comprising the hastily formed, but disorganized and uncoordinated coalition-militia. Hél-i-Fás' mother, Nóyæ-Nénæ, and he were swept up, by what was left of the coalition-militia into a massive flock of miserable (doomed) refugees . . . Unforeseen by any, the refugees -- remnants of a whole region of elves and humanity -- would eventually spend the rest of their bleak and short days as slaves, "entertainment" and fodder to the absolute worst in "human nature" and the outright evil of "human-like" (humanoid) peoples. 

The remnants of the regional population intermingled with fragments of the decimated [ Elven ] Compact, and as one winding, caravan, they attempted an exodus to (hoped-for) safety, cutting partly across the Jhónum’Oise (a narrow stretch of steppes, bracketed by a salt lake on one side, and a razor wall of mixed igneous rock and shale) . . . only to run right into the waiting claws of a battalion-sized force of Reapers: an overt embodiment -- the war-hammer and sword -- of the Devourers of Innocence and Hope.      

Hél-i-Fás suffered the steady, thorough erosion of almost any* belief in: kindness, generosity, charity and especially in justice and goodness itself as he witnessed (both day and night) his mother viciously used as both sex-slave and menial labor to the point of exhaustion, by the Reapers. He was also abused and degraded though not quite as much nor in very same manner; such ‘special treatment’ awaited Hél-i-Fás in a millers’ town -- Lyntehlokk (hundreds of miles away in the west) -- the Reapers sold him to. This went on for roughly six years, whilst enslaved to the massive, nomadic force of Reapers who continued incessantly terrorizing remote regions, poorly governed, or only nominally overseen by sovereign nations (or sovereigns) said regions were "technically"/"officially" belonging to.     

But the pain and horror of seeing his mother treated so, with no means to stop it corroded his soul. The trauma he had suffered inscribed a seemingly intractable conviction, he once confessed to a lovely, but clearly young and still naive prostitute, in the languid afterwards of a mutually heartfelt fucking:

 “My adorable idiot, life is cruel and has little regard for what or whom we are told is ‘righteous’. ‘Fairness’ is predicated more upon chance than upon any particular principle, or its advocacy. Providence is a dream for the the weak-willed and the desperate. Life offers no promises above anything other than that it's uncertain and brutal for either the virtuous or the vile -- for anyone. And lastly, my lovely-sweet, nubile idiot, what’s available in our respective lives, must be sought out, fought for, or even stolen through whatever talent, skill and guile you might have. The gods, if such exist, find us briefly amusing, before we pass back into the Void.”

Before he was purchased by Forghram Lyntehl owner and mayor of Lyntehlokk, Hél-i-Fás achieved two things: commit to eidetic memory the identities of each, every one of her mother’s tormentors, and he gave a quick merciful end to his completely broken mother -- snapping her neck just after a surreptitious, brief-yet-heartfelt conversation, upon her bedside within her hut (holding pen), deep in the night. 

Hél-i-Fás knew he was nowhere near ready to fulfill his silent, but gravely earnest vow to exact vengeance on each, every one of her mother’s tormentors . . .  He knew he needed to learn and learn well; to grow truly powerful and undoubtably capable, in order to fulfill the execution -- the annihilation -- of his nemeses -- the Reapers (and ultimately their masters, the Devourers of Innocence and Hope, though he does not know of them … yet), the Shadow-Fae Fiends and the Twisted-Dragon-Kin. So Hél-i-Fás bid his time, all the while tirelessly improving himself as best as he could, given his circumstance. In the interim, while trying to exude and maintain the appearance and manner of a truly subservient, broken refugee-now-slave, Hél-i-Fás kept honing the true weapons he knew he had -- his intellect; his agility and dexterity, his increasingly deepening ability for stoicism mixed with sarcastic wit. Indeed, Hél-i-Fás bid his time . . .

But it would not prove an easy undertaking. Often he came close . . .  to being wholly consumed by his deep pain, by the silent rage, that often churned [and churns] and swirled [and swirls] into abject despair. The daily maltreatment, the systemic and appalling abuse -- including intermittent rape by Forghram Lyntehl, his eldest sons Merrik and Fjork*, and a significant amount of the millers -- had plunged Hél-i-Fás further into a absolutely cold bleakness [blackness] of heart and mind . . .      

Many years later, with his approaching into his physical prime [23] Hél-i-Fás' opportunity came -- when the entire town was hopelessly drunk from nearly two days of nonstop celebration for an exceptionally productive season and a quite unexpected lessening of taxes by the local liege-lord overseeing Lyntehlokk. 

In the deep of night's cover (the "whisper of morning" as some would phrase it), Hél-i-Fás snuck into Forghram Lyntehl's house (earlier, with the entire town oblivious, he poisoned all seven of Forghram's, viscous Rottweilers), slit Forghram's and Merrik's throat, but after gagging and castrating them  . . . Immediately after this unceremonious but gruesome act of vengeance, Hél-i-Fás went to quick, focused work: filching and looting ordinary (but good quality) studded-leather armor, three outfits of fine clothing (including two pairs of boots), roughly 140 'marks' [gold coins], several days worth of food and water (and 2 liters of wine), one of Forghram's best rapiers, a simple short sword and four daggers; ransacking the tanner's and blacksmith's shoppe; after all that, he deftly doused the mill, Forghram Lyntehl's house, the inner walls of the town, the taverns, the smithy and the tanner's shoppe in lantern's oil (a variant of naphtha) . . . and then set the *whole town* afire. Immediately, he appropriated a small boat and absconded the scene nonchalantly yet swiftly oft times whistling, heading downriver, with Lyntehlokk behind him . . . engulfed in flames. 

Many days -- and scores or leagues -- later, still riding his stolen boat downriver, Hél-i-Fás realized when he murdered the entire town (essentially in their sleep), he achieved a true state of . . . euphoria . . . and that he was still feeling it.     

*NOTE: 

• Fjork was not in Lyntehlokk when Hél-i-Fás murdered his father and younger brother and burned it down; when he finally returned home, two days and a night had passed. 

(Fjork spent his time with several of his cronies repeatedly raping and beating the surviving family of a luckless farmer-woodsman, as his way of celebrating his father's unexpected good fortune. He took singular pleasure in humiliating and then killing the head of the household, in front of the three women, before he raped and beat them bloody. . . ) 

Nearly another two days had passed before one of the he liege-lord's ledger-clark and one of his sheriffs came to Lyntehlokk, in response to Fjork's demand for assistance and to initiate investigation.

The ledger-clark's and sheriff's investigations confirmed that the fire was indeed manufactured, but they were dubious as to whether it was truly deliberate, and (thus) some kind of malice. They were far more inclined to believe, and glibly suggested that it was the result of recklessness and negligence, since the entire town had engaged in an unusual and unusually fervent carousal and revelry. Fjork would abide none of their arguments. In his heart, he knew who would've been capable of perpetrating this . . . even if he couldn't prove it. 

So on his own, Fjork Lyntehl has set out to find Hél-i-Fás … to avenge his family.

• Four months had passed, and in the interim, a couple minor, yet markedly promising events [ "Turns of Fortune" ] came to Hél-i-Fás . . . 
  

Initially --- within the first, of those four months --- Hél-i-Fás lived in what passed for the back-alleys of Deckert. A seaside port-town, that doesn't see a great deal of trade, but seems to do moderately well nonetheless, Hél-i-Fás chose Deckert as his final stop, after a week riding downriver. It was a rough month, and he did what he could to lay low, yet not starve. Yet while that first month was a hard and precarious one, every day seemed pure godsend, bringing unprecedented happiness to Hél-i-Fás. For the first time in nearly his whole life, he was free; no longer property, living in degradation and terror, night-and-day.

Within the first week of the second month, skulking and scavenging in what passes for Deckert's underside, Hél-i-Fás made a blunder in his daily efforts to not starve. He snuck into and raided one of the outside, storage sheds for staples as well as a sea-glass jug of  uisge beatha [ "lively water" ], much more commonly known as whiskey; in doing so he activated the larder's magical, telephonic, but silent alarms.

And thus he 'got made', but he didn't know it … not until the inn's proprietors slyly and blithely approached him in his hovel, under the pier. 

Kennewíck Ogden: 

"You know, all this brackish water you're practically living in --- it's terrible for that fine, studded-leather armour and that fine rapier I'm sure you also stole."  

Hélennä-Rhë Ogden: 

"And though this little burg has naught for charity, besides what shamefully little the churches and temples offer, my darling husband Kennewíck and I are not folk to turn away those in need … especially one of our kind . . . one of our kith."

And from that fateful day, Hél-i-Fás was brought into something wholly new and (initially) terrifying him: a life wherein kindness, friendship and love were no longer either most far-distant (yet deeply painful) memory … or bizarre, incomprehensible abstraction.

Kennewíck Ogden and Hélennä-Rhë Ogden readily become Hél-i-Fás' contacts into the criminal underworld (not merely the underside of Deckert, at that). But incredibly, just as readily, they also took on role of his mentors.

And atop of that, unspoken (but fully understood and readily embraced) something else immediately emerged among all --- an erotic and romantic involvement . . . Three lovers -- a Triskele*, seemingly not only not at odds with each other, but actually quite complimentary and supportive. 

By the end of that second month, the three had become fast friends, with clear genuine indication of becoming more; a little earlier, Kennewíck and Hélennä-Rhë Ogden had put Hél-i-Fás and themselves to work -- on the endeavor of training him to fully become what he seemed [ seems ] clearly meant to be … a rogue, and most likely … an assassin.      

*NOTE: 

• Kennewíck Ogden is a master thief and bard. Though slightly lesser calibre in the latter, his proficiency and artistry -- particularly with hand-drums, the tambourine, the hammered dulcimer, mandolin, the vielle, the viol, the bandore, and especially the *harmonium [ harmooni*; circa late 14th century … I believe ] -- is no less worthy of admiration. Alongside this, the style or specialization of thievery he's accomplished in (though almost always curiously humble about it), is acrobatic burglary. Kennewíck set Hél-i-Fás to learn, almost within the first week of the fateful day he discovered him trying to pilfer one of the inn's, outdoor larders.  

• Hélennä-Rhë Ogden is also far more than her (carefully cultivated) veneer. She's also an accomplished thief and bard, to be more precise a spy, assassin and bard . Though she doesn't command anywhere near as many instruments as her partner/husband, she's truly a consummate master of the *peasant's kantele* [ talonpoikaiskantele*; circa mid-12th century … I believe ], wields a wonderful contralto that (still) only suffers slight blemish from age, and is so adept at storytelling and all germane of thespian craft [ e.g. acting ]. She is wondrous to behold … truly captivating. That said, Hélennä-Rhë has inducted Hél-i-Fás into a slow but rigorous curriculum on the science(s) and art … of poisoning (indisputably one of her specialities). She also began a seemingly slow, but no-less exhaustive edification and tutelage into history, politics (and intrigue corresponding), literature … and the arcana (the lattermost with intermittent assistance from Kennewíck).