Bayeo

Born: Teuthal
Educated: Cathal, The Practical
Skills: Short Sword, Travel, Care:Horses, Knowledge: Geography
Special: Favors (Ternyn), Contacts (Ternyn)

Profession: Trader/Guard

Bio

Caerdwyn’s childhood Teuthál wasn’t yours. You don’t remember anything of the flat earth smell of the plains and bogs and rivers. Your first memories are the sharp-fingered mountain smells between the kingdoms, and the distant fecundity of the Great Swamp beyond the mountains called The Dragon’s Spine.

There was something about the scent of the Practical the day you arrived that never left you. It may have been the fresh clovers, basking in the sun. It may have been the soft moss on the oak tree. But there was another scent about the Practical, like amber and green light, which lingered also about the headmistress, somehow.

With the sweet odor of deep black water running in stone, and the sweet tang of the laurel trees in summer, you know why they must first have built the Practical in the little cleft valley it occupied.

The Headmistress greeted both of you at the great old wormwood gates. You have no idea what she said, but she was unlike the men who took you across the mountains in every way. Each bow and smile she offered to Caerdwyn, she offered to you. The attention and kindness in her presence was an unexpected boon that drew you, almost magically, into touch with the heart of the Practical.

The severe, young mistress T tested you for the magic that brought the two of you here. You didn’t measure up, apparently. In some scared part of you, you imagined this a great failing, that they would evict you, that they would split you away from Caerdwyn, leave you to the wolves or some other terrible ending. After Mistress T lost interest in you, the Headmistress (not even a secret letter for her, just “headmistress”) offered you the run of the college.

Although you couldn’t sit bored in classes all day and complain about it later (like Caerdwyn), you explored the grounds and the mountains. You met the wolves of the mountains and joined them from time to time in their games (though of course, they were trying to eat you as well as play with you – but not seriously so). You met the staff, and learned that many things happened at the Practical that were surprisingly… practical.

They made wool from the local sheep (oh, how you joined the wolves in staring down at those ripe little puffballs from the mountains, drooling); they wove cloth, and used a special kind of moss that grew above the little black river to make pillows and stuffed chair seats for a surprisingly discerning audience.

They harvested woodfalls of great old oaks and lovingly crafted home goods for sale. They kept a massive garden of herbs and tender plants in the shelter of the giant manzanita groves on the north side of the property.

After a few years, you had grown strong, and made your way to the practices Caerdwyn was taking with the fightmaster, Glayn, who always smelled of clean sweat and the strange shiny fibers of his outlandish clothing. The heft of weapons was strange and interesting. Even though the weapons were not made for your smaller hands and Vulfen body, the wolfy dance of the fightmaster was as delicious as 2-day-dead buck in the cool sun.

It was something wonderful to dance and twist and clack the wooden practice weapons with Caerdwyn. But staying, always, in that small place… it made your belly itch. Erdyn, the trader, must have seen you pacing the walls, and asked if you would like to make the journey to the sea with him to trade. He made it sound like you and your weapon would be guarding the whole caravan.
Who knows, maybe you were?

The great salt brunt of the sea was an unexpected glory. The cold wind in your fur, the scent of arch-winged birds and the incredibly delicious waft of rotting fish and seaweed at the docks gave you the kind of toothy grin that definitely kept thieves at bay.

The town of Ardlee, your main trading point smelled old and fishy and friendly – to a point. There was definitely an eye cast at you in the town, and it was there that you learned that the Practical was different from other places. The rare Vulfen in Cathál was a servant, much like you would later learn they all were in their populousness in Teuthál.

You went once to the seaport capitol of Teuthál, Aberavon. On the docks there, delivering a very special shipment of swamp Cypress furniture for a ship, you saw them. You don’t remember what they were called, you only remember the way the docks all went quiet as their vessel rose from the sea, the subtle and beautiful oils that rose from them, hinting at hidden wonders beneath the waves. Their hands and feet were webbed, and their shapes were more varied than the Saren, their colors subtle and wild.

You thought all cities would be like Aberavon, with its two graceful white Builder bridges arching over the black water.

There were many small adventures with Erdyn that week in Aberavon. The short of it is that you saved the life of some questionably-masculine prince of Aberavon and his young “manservant” who may have been a visiting prince from Ternyn making crucial “trade negotations”.

You learned some basic numbers from one of the Masters at the college, so you can account for things and keep Caerdwyn’s money in order. Both Headmistress and Caerdwyn offered you you freedom when his time came to return to the Questioners in Caer Cuvál. Erdyn offered you a job, as did the head weaver, Llewellyn.

In the end, you had the itch, and you followed it and Caerdwyn across the mountains, around the Swamp, and into the rich, black mud-smell of Teuthál, away from what home you may have known in your life.

The wolves that come down from Teinwood have a different song. The Vulfen of the southern plains have their own, strange song. As, you were to find out, does the light in the Builder Catacombs, and a smell all their own, something new and old and… dangerous.