d&d character - Thusa

My parents sold me when I was seven. The lord was an effeminate fop and a cruel man. Many of the bondmen and servants bore suspicion that he carried devil's blood in his veins because during times of distemper, his mien would become unnaturally contorted, and his eyes would smoulder. These spells were not frequent, but scarcely a season passed without a manifestation.

He was forever arranging elaborate discomfitures for his servants; a common theme was to induce them to commit to some task with confidence, then to ensure that they fail utterly at it, furnishing occasion for the lord to wreak terrible punishments upon them.

We all bore the scars of it.

I was treated well, or well enough for a bondservant. I never provoked the lord's wrath and so never underwent his torments but when I had the misfortune of being the undeserving target of his petty machinations or when luck merely failed me in a way that resulted in the failure of one of my ordinary tasks. On account of my diligence and sobriety, at the age of twenty-one, I was given the station of gamekeeper, besides serving as a woodcutter, which I had done since the age of thirteen. And with this honour, I was freed from the necessity of many menial tasks which I had not enjoyed.

An expansive woodland spread across the western corner of the holding, and it provided both timber and game. I grew to enjoy what I considered a lordship over the beasts and fowls of the forest, and I managed them with care. It was well that I did, for often and often, the lord received visitors from far-off lands, and it was his habit to take visitors on a hunt. So often did he hunt in the wood that I feared for the survival of the wildlife.

My life took a turn at the age of thirty-five: I was in the woodland with a cadre of loggers. An unchecked youth felled a tree without alerting the rest of us, and it knocked me to the ground. I was dazed, but when I regained my focus, I found that I was pinioned. My fellows gathered around, and I conveyed my suspicion that my leg was broken. This news seemed to crystalize their will, and they quickly reached an accord to forsake me beneath the fallen tree.

When night fell, I despaired of survival, for even if I could free myself, I could not escape the predators of the forest with my leg broken. In my surrender, I disbelieved my sight when there appeared before me an otherlight, bobbing and swaying, now disappearing, now reappearing from behind a tree; and carrying the limpid glow, a nymph of the wood. He was slender of limb and seemed to be all angles except for the supple vines that trailed from every limb and spilled from his crown. Too, a thousand tiny antlers, wooden branches, really, grew from his head where hair should be. I thought his narrow eyes regarded me with deliberation for a long while, and I watched as if transfixed, saying nothing.

Eventually he spoke, "What would you have of the spirit of the hawthorn?"

I said I wished only to be free to return to my home, though once having uttered this pronouncement, it struck me that it was a foolish desire. Who but a fool would tempt a fairy for a favour in exchange for a boon so worthless as safe return to a life of servitude and abuse? The nymph answered that the price of my rescue would be an alliance and that I must advocate for the benefit of the hawthorn's home. So saying, he pressed his hand to the earth beside the fallen tree, and at once I felt my leg free. Painfully, I drew it forth into the open air, but the nymph was not finished with me; he held aloft his lamp of otherlight and called out in a song which caused the surrounding grove to sway. Before my eyes, tiny sprouts appeared from the disturbed soil beneath me and grew into green seedlings. These reached for my injury and probed it with delicate stalks, and each touch imparted a peaceful relief such as I had never imagined. The lambent otherlight dimmed as the song proceeded and the magical herbs probed my leg, and eventually, I was left alone with no light save what gentle illumination penetrated from the moon and stars above through the leaves overhead. My leg supported me and felt whole, so I dared to make my way home, and I arrived in safety.

Thereafter, I continued to protect and endanger the game by turns, as necessary to keep my master satisfied; and I commenced to seek management of the woodland. We continued to fell trees for timber, but in every instance, I exerted all my influence to have the crew select trees whose removal would promote the life of the woodland. My efforts won for me a reputation as an encumbrance, motivated by stinginess or laziness. My rapport with the other bondmen was at further jeopardy because my station as gamekeeper was an object of envy among them.

During this time and for long years after, I frequented the place where my life had been spared by the wood nymph, and I received tutelage at his hand. I learned the nature of the plants and animals of the forest to an extent that my former understanding seemed that of a child by comparison. I learned to draw and push and weave the magic that infused all nature. And as I came to understand the wild lands, I grew to be motivated more by a desire for their welfare than by the pact I had sworn in exchange for my life.

I encountered other nymphs of the wood, though I developed affiliation with none but the one who had saved my life, the aforesaid spirit of the hawthorn.

When I reached fifty years of age, I was still hale and in better fettle than nearly any other bondservant I knew, but my face showed the signs of human age. The lord, however, seemed as vital as ever I had known, and perhaps that is the nature of his kind. Having had scant tutelage in the ways of the world, I could not then say.

Our interactions had grown more strained as the years had worn away at his woodland. I had not attained any station of management over the timber, and incessant demands for wealth had felled trees more quickly than the wood could sustain. The diminution of the forest must soon become undeniable even to the woodcutters, I knew. I was sensitive to it, and I withheld game from the lord's hunts in as much measure as I dared, for their numbers had dwindled with the loss of forest land. The tension reached a head one evening after a meager hunt had failed to impress the lord and his visiting dignitaries. The lord had me beaten and pilloried. I dared not call upon the magic while under the eye of so many of the lord's men, for I knew that he would not suffer that a bondman who had power to liberate himself should live.

After an exhausting day and night in the stocks, I was moved to the dungeon, where I might not be at risk of suffocating to death. I endured two days further there with water to drink but no food to eat. And then I performed something I had never done before, indeed, never known that I might: I transformed. I became a mink, escaped the dungeon, and fled to the forest in human shape once again. In my time of need, I used my knowledge of the wood to hunt and slay a beast of the night for sustenance. When day came, I sought out the grove where the spirit of the hawthorn dwelt and discovered to my horror that the trees of that place had all been felled. They lay in the earth, not even having been split for boards nor dragged away to a lumberyard. Envious rivals of mine had identified my sacred refuge, then taken advantage of my moment of disgrace with the lord to destroy it.

I remained in the wood for a fortnight thereafter. The lord sent crews to search for me, having guessed that I would make the woodland my sanctuary, but I evaded them with ease. I hunted and foraged and reflected on what the future held for myself and this damaged wilderness. I searched long for the spirit of the hawthorn and kept a keen eye open for any other fairy, but they had gone or else had had done with me. I reasoned that I had not the might to stay the devouring blade of the woodsman's axe and that without the power of some other agent, the mighty forest wherein I sojourned must unavoidably perish. So I left.