Kais Foxglove

Backstory

I am Kais of the Foxglove clan, son of Dian Cecht. You might have heard of him - I understand that, in his time, you could clear a room of brigands by mentioning his name. My story begins when I was 12. I was practicing my tracking by following a water deer*, and ended up far too far from home. I did not fully understand it at the time, but my village was in a dangerous wood, and the village elders would cast a circle around it at night, to warn of ordinary dangers such as brigands, and keep out the more, shall we say, unusual things that lived there. I raced through the twilight to reach the circle before true dark, but as I approached, the light grew brighter, not dimmer, and my nose filled with smoke. My village was ablaze, and under attack. I did what my father had taught me to do - I pressed myself into the ground, and became the forest floor. The brigands ran past, almost stepping on me, but didn't see me. Then I heard my older brother's voice, and without thinking I jumped up from my hiding place and ran toward him. He was there, just inside the circle, with fire all around, facing a brigand the size of a bear, of a race that I have never seen before or since. The brigand roared and swung his axe at me. That's the last thing I remember of that night.

When I came to, my village was gone. And I don't mean that it had burned - I mean there was no trace that it had ever been. I woke up behind a smoldering log, in a ring of burned trees, a black circle around a fairy ring of lush green growth untouched by the fire. But the trees within the circle were not part of my forest - in fact, they seemed to be different kinds than I had ever seen. I walked in a daze through the strange wood, with my head pounding in pain and confusion. Eventually I found an axe head near where I had lain, and a scabbard ornamented with foxes and foxgloves, but no other sign of what had transpired the night before, or indeed for my whole life.

At the time, I was angry. I thought my family had abandoned me to the brigands. Years later, I reasoned out what must have happened: When the brigand swung at me, the axe head flew off [#rolleda1], so I was hit with only the handle. This was still enough of a blow to throw my small body into the forest and knock me unconscious. My cloak was soaked from tracking the water deer, and that with my dry leathers underneath protected me from the fire. My brother, though, only saw the brigand swing and my body fly into the fire. By all rights I should have been dead, and my family undoubtedly thought I was. I spent a few weeks living off the land, wondering if my family would come back for me. I already knew which plants and mushrooms you could eat, and how to build a fire - but I was still a child. My bow was little more than a toy, and through my impatience i quickly spent all the arrows I had. Thus it came to pass that the smell of cooking lured me into Hellim's camp to steal my dinner. He later said that he decided not to kill me because he was getting too old for adventuring and needed a steady income, and he figured I had an aptitude for thieving when he realized I'd been caught coming back for seconds. I think in truth he couldn't bear to kill anyone for stealing food. Anyway, I became his ward and apprentice, begging for coins by day and stealing trinkets by night, which Hellim would sell. Obviously, a big city was a far better place for this sort of living than the villages of my forest, and thus I came of age in <city>, a wood elf with no forest, and the only member of the Foxglove clan still known to walk the earth.

Hellim was only half elf, thus while I slowly grew to adulthood, he more quickly faded into old age. Two months ago he passed from this world. For the last few years I have cared for him; I'm not sure what I will do next. Perhaps I will look for my family, though no one I've talked to seems to have heard anything of my village, my clan, or even my father.

Kais is slender, with copper skin (darkened by the sun to the color of autumn leaves) and straight, nearly-black hair.