So if you['re reading this, you're probably wondering why it's here, what it's about, and what the mindset of the writer was about. Hell, you might be me, years from now, wondering what the hell I was thinking. It's who knows what time in the morning, I've had enough dwarven beverages to be deluded into thinking I'm a writer of some quality, and I'm in a loquacious mood at the moment. There's something my mother always told me – “never let a story go unwritten” – and I've been retelling bits and pieces of this story so often over the past week or so that I may as well start committing it to paper before the details get too muddled.
So a quick introduction to me - I may edit this later, but I was taught to never leave a page blank if I had something to write in it, so here goes for now. I was born the son of a bardic scholar and a paladin of Pelor - a combination like that, you'd probably be thinking that I'm some sort of florid conversationalist. Not so – I'm a cleric of Pelor, but we're getting ahead of ourselves here.
My mother was born Linny Madisson in a sea port, but she was never content to be a Linny. She caught a ship at the age of sixteen, calling herself Katarina with a rapier on her hip and a thirst for adventure in her heart. She supposedly spent time as a swashbuckler on the high seas, hunted game alongside the plains goblin tribes of the south, and once nearly married a noble lord in order to get access to his library. I have no way of knowing whether most of her stories are true, but as I said, her personal motto was 'never let a story go unwritten', and if my childhood had anything to say about it, she had a lot of living to write down. I didn't inherit her quickness of wit or fingers, but it was from her I learned to speak the language of goblinoids - our secret language, when I was a child - and her drive to seek knowledge and wisdom has guided me even to this day.
My father was a paladin of Pelor, as I've mentioned – Nathaniel Elmsby. The Elmsby family has a long history of respect to Pelor – of respect to all of the gods, really. They're gods. It's not like they're not there, like you can't feel it in your bones when you set foot in a church and know that something is watching – and as such, we Elmsbys do respect all of the gods. But Pelor is our god of choice. He's the god of the sun, after all – and when it comes right down to it, the sun is one of the most important things to humans. You can see the sun and feel its warmth almost anywhere, and its light brings life to the world. My father has retired from active service to Pelor - his sword and shield now adorn the mantle, and hopefully he will never have to take them down in anger again. He was a wise man, the sort of person who could look you in the eye and see your thoughts even as you had them. He has always been willing to listen to the troubles of others, and give his best reasoned suggestions if people wish it. It was on his knee that I learned of Pelor first and foremost.
The Elmsby family is well extended - I may even still have a great-grandmother or two somewhere, and on my father's side, I have grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles, and a couple of aunts. My mother has mostly broken ties with her family, so I can't say if I have family on that side - I've never seen them, and she certainly doesn't seem to want to discuss them; she has embraced the Elmsby crest as her own.
Our family believes in one thing above all else – “do what you excel in, and excel in what you do.” My parents diligently searched for my calling, and encouraged me to explore every opportunity to learn my limits and my talents. I played with wooden swords, as did most children of my village, and was tough enough to hold my own – but that was not the path for me. My mother would make games of balancing on ropes, or juggling, or keeping a book balanced on one's head – and while I didn't do worse than most anyone could, those were not things I excelled at either. My mother and father were both good speakers, in public and in private - but to myself, the words never came as easily or as smoothly. I read of the books of Katarina's library, and have always had a passion for learning new things - yet the life of the scholar or arcanist never appealed. My voice is passable, pleasant enough to the ear, but I have never been known as a spectacular singer or a persuasive talker.
It was only when I started to embrace the church of Pelor that I found there was something in which I excelled. When I fought with the other boys, it was often as not to protect someone else who was being treated ill without cause. I was good at helping others to feel better where I could, and did my best to be there to listen when I couldn't help. Often, I could guess at what others might be troubled by before they even said it themselves. Looking back, it was perhaps inevitable that I became a cleric - and perhaps the only thing I never really predicted for myself. I expected that I would become a paladin someday… but when I first felt that calling, it wasn't after a day of tussling with wooden swords.
There was a boy named Walter Pellman - he was one of the little brutes of the village, the sort that took a perverse pleasure in causing trouble, who bragged that he'd been responsible for the half-elf boy moving from town because 'freaks like him didn't deserve to live in houses'. He was also passably good with those wooden swords - I'd suffered a couple of defeats to him and his mocking laughter and the taunts of the interchangeable youths that always seemed to trail after him before deciding that it was probably wiser to avoid playing 'duel' with him anymore. If it wasn't for little Senni, the neighbor girl, I probably never would have considered it again.
Senni wanted to be a knight. She had a toy sword - it was actually an old one of mine, cut short where the tip had broken off when I'd hit it against a rock - and an improvised shield that, honestly, was just a barrel lid with string wound through it. We were friends, and as you might have guessed, I liked to play sword games with her. Not too many other kids did - but she was happy to get to play at it. That is, until Walter decided it'd be funny to beat on her. He called her over, and when she ran over to see what he wanted, he cracked her hard in the head with the thick wooden training sword he used - a REAL training sword, not the toy swords we played with. She fell down, crying, and it looked like he was about to hit her again.
I had a personal motto of my own - “when you have friends, you help them.” I was 14, it wasn't an age for good mottos. And I made a prayer, right there. “Pelor, I know that you don't approve of violence for the sake of it, but he's hurting my best friend, and I can't just leave her to get beaten by him. Please help me, because I'm about to go fight him and I know I can't win against him.” That probably wasn't the actual prayer – as I said, I was 14, it was probably something much less eloquent. Maybe, “Pelor help me, I'm about to do something really dumb because I don't want him to hurt Senni.”
Anyhow, I'd never actually won against him in a swordfight - even before he got that whomper of a training sword from his father. And I'd never get close enough to him to stop him before his little friends got in the way. And he was getting ready to hit her again while she was down. Coup de grace, I guess you'd call it. I looked at my toy sword with its bright little sun painted on the side… and I made a decision. I threw it at him.
It didn't knock him out, or really do anything spectacular like that – but it did hit him. Right in the nose, hard enough to make it start bleeding profusely. He howled like a madman, and started coming my way … and just about then, a priest emerged from the house nearby. “What is all the yelling about?” he inquired.
“That kid hit me in the nose! I'm going to kill him!” Walter shouted. His buddies, however, had come to the realization that Walter's position - standing over a crying Senni with what was essentially a big club in hand - didn't exactly make him look like the victim here, and quietly started sidling off as the priest came out, a stern look on his face.
“Young man, where did you get that training sword?” the priest said. “And what are you doing using it to beat on young ladies?” He reached out, grabbed the end of the weapon, and pulled it out of his grasp, as Walter began to grasp that maybe he was in trouble. I went over to check on Senni while the priest continued to admonish Walter – she had a bad cut on her forehead, and was deeply upset, so I helped her to her feet and started cleaning her up. I didn't realize the priest had finished scolding Walter and was watching me intently until I'd finished dabbing at the cut with a handkerchief and noticed him there, leaning on Walter's former weapon as though it were a walking stick. “Now then, you two… what do YOU have to say for yourselves?”
“I threw my sword at him and hit him because he was beating on Senni,” I said, without hesitation, “and I wanted him to stop. He called her over and then just hit her without warning.” Senni nodded, mutely, in agreement.
“Well, you'd best come in and let me have a look at that,” the priest mused, glancing at the two of us. “What's your name, son?”
“Elmsby. Altarian Elmsby.” Heh. I probably should've explained earlier, in case you care about these things, but “Altarian” was my mother's idea. Honestly, I usually go by Altair, because I get stupid questions about what sort of name is Altarian anyhow when I use the full name. If you ever hear my mother say 'Altarian Malleus Elmsby', it's a sign that I'm in trouble.
Anyhow, the priest turned out to be an old friend of my father - a man by the name of Torenth, who had once served as a battle cleric in the northlands, bringing the warmth and light of Pelor to the frozen wastes. He mentioned something that I remember to this day, as clear as if I'd thought to write it down then. “Well, Altarian Elmsby, I think that you may have a gift for helping people. You may want to look into that… it may be just the path for you.”
Of course, there's every chance that my father had simply talked about me looking for a path in life. Maybe it was coincidence, and I'm always open to the possibility that there are mundane answers for things in the world. But I think that maybe Pelor thought that I would make an excellent cleric. Torenth eventually supported me when I applied as an acolyte - as did my father, of course - and I have done my best to help those in need: my close friends, my companions, acquaintances, and even my enemies, at times. Regardless of what happens, I hope to continue to spread Pelor's light and warmth, to illuminate the darkest hour, warm the coldest heart, and banish the foulest darkness. Did I succeed?
I hope so. I hope to be the one reading this years from now, or else this is yet another bad idea concocted at odd hours as a result of dwarven ale.