The Winter Lords (The Wizard)

Oremannes

During the Long Centuries, the winter snows lay thick and heavy upon the world. Life under the Shroud of Darkness knew little change and people lived without the light of the sun, or the rain upon their face. For long years it was thus and man and elf toiled to survive. Unklar, the Horned God, Lord of Aufstrag, the author of the world’s suffering, slept in his many pillared halls, upon his chair of wood, where he dreamed the world’s nightmares.

Oremannes was a wizard, a thrall to a master who was more lich-lord than mage, and whose age defied counting. Oremannes learned his craft in secret from his Master and excelled at all things. But where his master was cruel, he was kind, where his master feared the dark, Oremannes knew no such thoughts. He mastered fire, and lightning; he cast shields of shimmering magics and fashioned prisons for creatures great and small. He loved the warmth of his flame and made a staff for himself that held the fires of Burasil and with it he kept the Darkness at bay. At last, when his power had waxed greater than his Master could teach he left the undying creature and struck out in the world of Winters Dark.

All across the wilds of the Tar Kiln he traveled, through the Northern Marches, across the Lothian Plains, even to the southlands as far as the Amber Sea. He climbed the mountains of the Dwarves in the east and the high peaks of the Rhodope to look upon the plains of the west. But it was to the Tar Kiln that he always returned, for there the snows fell thickest and the people were his own. He walked those wastes for many long years so that those who lived there came to know him and call him friend and ally and asked for his protection if in need.

So it was that Oremannes met the Beast. A long giant of a creature, it strode the world on four squat legs, 12 feet long, with claws of steel and fangs the length of daggers. Heartless, it preyed upon men, and women and the babes in their arms. For years it terrified the Micklewood, at the heart of the Tar Kiln. Oremannes set out with several comrades to track this beast and to slay it if he could.

There, in the wilds, he found it and fought it. He learned that it was a demon of the other worlds and possessed of powers he could not imagine. He burned it and struck it with bolts; his comrades filled with arrows and when those failed they clove it with axe and sword. In turn the beast raked with claw and tore with fang, broke the earth open and called creatures of the All Father’s nightmare from the deeps. But in the end Oremannes had the right of it and he struck the creature with his staff and unleashed the fires of Burasil upon it and burnt it so that it fell to the earth. But Burasil was always fickle and using his power was much like using chance, so that Oremannes made as if to roll the dice. And he failed for the flames that licked the Beast burnt him as well and he fell by its side, burnt and dying.

His comrades buried him there, at the foot of a great rock. But men say that his tale did not end there, but rather only began. For Oremannes had learnt sorcery from his Master that kept his life his own and allowed him to walk the world again after death. So it came to be that the people of the Tar Kiln called on Oremannes as a Winter Lord. Asking for his aid when the cold became too much to bare and fear of the dark kept them shuttered in doors.