Fields of grain stretching over gently rolling hills for as far as the eye can see. The gentle majesty of the terrain washed through his soul and made it cry out even more. Looking forward was the bounty of the earth, and turning around showed the fire-gutted timbers of once strong homes. Bodies strewn about the street and blood soaking the ground upon which children once played happily. The sheer disparity of the two views tore at his heart and sickened him. He knew the truth; a truth he had learned well, lo these many years of life. In a few short years nature would reclaim what was now an atrocity, and the world would turn on, not even noticing the wars of mortals.

His mind wandered back over memories of his distant youth, a time of idealistic wonder and yearnings for the ‘glory’ of war. Bards were in his opinion, greater deceivers than daemons summoned from the nether reaches of hell itself. They spun great and powerful stories of battle and adventure, but they conveniently left out the blood, guts, death, wailing and gnashing of teeth, feasting carrion, and worst of all, they never once mentioned the personal cost to a man of watching brothers and sisters of the sword die in the dirt for the greed of other men. They spoke to the hope that clutches all young people’s hearts, that they might be meant for something great, and deceive them into picking up a sword just like the one that will eventually sever them from this world.

He can remember it like it was yesterday, a minstrel playing at the tavern his father ran, bawdy drinking songs that the miners demanded, and syrupy sweet love songs for the women. Then a single ballad of woe and honor, The Lay of Falgath the Resolute. Battles and magic, swords and bows, good and evil, all this and more pulled at the longing of a tavern boy to become more than his birthright. He had waited until his fifteenth harvest, as his father had insisted, and then he had gone. It was the beginning of his story, and he has asked that I tell it to any that might listen. Hear and beware, this is the tale Toric the Soulless, The Sword of Daath.