This is a setting for the Multiverser: The Game roleplaying system of dimensional travelling. Its also usable for other roleplaying systems. If you need a writer for your rpg…you know where to find me. Enjoy.
Lady of Aelfheim
By Eric R. Ashley
Alynna de’toLossorian was born in the days when the Lodar still walked on the misty forrests of Aelfheim. For her first birthday, the Lord of Fire lit her glory torch, and the Earthmother burped her when she fussed. To say she had a cossetted childhood would understate things considerably. One of her first memories was the being she called ‘Unca Stone’, holding her in his arms as they walked through the Heavens, through outer space, and asking her what color the new planet he had designed should be.
And then they left.
She still had her playmates, the talking animals of the Near Wood, and her father and mother. But the Powers had retreated from Aelfheim, and the world for a very long time was a cold place even as the tevinrood trees flickered and flamed in the sunset, and the losetta flowers brought tears to her eyes even when they were not blooming.
The difference between being surrounded by completely good and loving and nigh omnipotent beings, and her merely immortal and ancient and wise parents was more than she could bear she decided, and retreated into seclusion on her one hundredth and tenth birthday.
She wove a maze about herself with spellcraft, and in a fit of despair allowed it to unfurl without limit. She sulked for centuries, and when at last she wanted company, she tried to find her way ouf of the maze, but could not. It had grown vast and wild and perilous.
She made sendings, and called for help from her relatives, from the great amongst the talking animals, but no message came back. Fearful of some disaster, she turned to the Powers, but they did not answer her. Violently angered, she turned to her books of magic, and began to tamper with the Major Forces.
Time resisted her, and so she turned to Death. And out of her anger and fear and need, she created something that she thought would have the strength to get out, to bash through all the obstacles. Time passed, and she weakened.
Needing nourishment, she turned to the lowly of the land, and gave them Speech. Now intelligent, the squirrels and the mice and the hawks gathered her food. Some she specially loved, and created for them humanoid bodies reflecting their animal natures.
Now stronger, she began again to cast the spells that made a golem of shadow. And there it stood before her, and there it plunged away, but it did not go far. It did not bash its way through the maze. It just stood.
And then the Powers appeared on to her.
“You have sinned.” They cried. “The Great Laws we gave you. You tossed them aside for your own will. You have made a Power of nightmare, fire, and shadow. Now all the people of this world will suffer for your deeds as nightmare stalks them in their dreams, and fire rages where once it lay tame, and the shadows beckon with sharp teeth.”
Alynna bowed, still heartsore, but sad for her evil.
“Kill me then. Destroy this beast I made. I want no more to live in this pain.”
“We cannot easily kill a Power, nor can we kill you as you are intertwined with the Power. And now you are intertwined with the Land as this beast is so that to kill you would be to kill the Land. The only thing that can save you is a dead man and love.”
Alynna accepted her judgment, and used her magics to try to slow the corruption and the pain her shadow brought. But, decade by decade, it grew stronger. More monsters were found, and the Maze grew not just strange, but corrupt. Alynna opened her house to others, seeking the dead man, and love. For a while she thought she had found it when she met a fascinating vampire from beyond the world. In the village in the center of the maze just down from the scalloped spire of razor-edged stone that was her castle, there were many of many species. Some human, some low elven (that is born in recent days, and lacking true memory of the Gods.)
MORE LATER…
