Glaive Lore
Last updated
Last updated
Yeah, if you need to hire muscle, I have some recommendations. Just keep your voice down. Maybe you need someone stealthy – someone who can hide in the underbrush and attack outta nowhere, never see them coming? Got an assassin girl in the rafters that’ll make ribbons of a body in seconds. No, not quite right. But getting warmer, am I? You want to make a big splash, do you? Leave a real impression. Maybe the target’s friends will think twice… leave town to save their own heads?
Then you’ll be wanting Glaive.
He’s the big guy in the back. Yup, that one sitting next to the heavy metal engine on a stick in the corner. But he doesn’t come cheap. You gotta wonder about a Grangor in these parts, sweating his arse off likely, hell-bent on some trophy-hunting mission, keeping to himself, making enemies.
Grangor don’t take naturally to mercenary work, in my humble… whassat? That blindfold he wears? Glaive don’t have eyes, they say, or at least he can’t use ‘em if he does. All kindsa stories about how that particular misfortune found him, none of ‘em bedtime stories for young pups if you know what I’m… I don’t particular know how he does it, but he never misses his mark. They say a creature loses his sight, he gains power in his other senses.
Sure, sure, he’ll make a show of the corpse. Scare off your trouble. But I ain’t have any experience with that. Go on and talk to him, but if you’re planning on getting a discount on account of his blindness, I’ll call up the cleaning crew in advance to sweep up your skull bits from the floor. And hey, a word of advice: Don’t look right at him. Grangor don’t take kindly to that. And yeah, he’ll know if you do.
You thought you could call me beast from across the cantina. If you whispered it, you thought I wouldn’t hear. You thought that distance would give you a running start. And now you are at my feet, drunk little carnie fool. That’s why you lose at the dice tables, and why you return to lose again: You are only good from range.
But now my axe has knocked you close, so while you’re at my feet clutching at that nasty bruise, why don’t you insult me again? Ah, good, good. There’s some courage in you. I can respect a man who spits in the face of a beast.
Perhaps, though, you should think on what you consider beastly. True, my kind lives in the treetops and mountain caves. The patterns in our fur hide us in the vines, brush and thorns. Weaker creatures feed us. But you pockmark our mountains with your mines, draw out the crystal and the gold, then fight over the wells while the mountains crumble. The avalanches draw the beasts, as you call us, closer and closer. Which path is truly less civilized?
Shh, stop shaking, little carnie. This is not the end. There’s still a trophy to claim.
Get up off the ground, you cowardly shivering leaf, and let’s have a roll of dice to prove we can play nice. You can have all my gold if you win. But if you lose, I’m taking that side arm. Oh, it’s special to you, little Ringo? Then you’d best not lose.
And you’d best not cheat. I can smell every move.
This skull here, this was a steel-toothed grimjaw. My grandfather’s grandfather took it down. You can put your whole hand in the hole, here, from my ancestor’s axe. Story goes, he climbed up its back to defeat it. Ha! Imagine that fight! I dream of it!
This was a poisonous harpy stinger, proof that hundreds of seasons past, these grew several times the size they are today. Over here in the jar, this is a firewyrm eyeball; my father destroyed this one. No skeleton to speak of in these things, but you don’t know your own worth until you split apart an eye as big as your own head.
Over here are my trophies. Behold the nocturnal whiptail here. Had to track him through the mud for four days, picking out his scent from the other burrowing things. His skull was in too many pieces to preserve, but I kept the tail.
Few outsiders have seen my trophy room. You should feel lucky your skull is not hung on the wall with the rest. Ha!
The summit of the mountain had been cleared and the circled stones consecrated with sacred signs and symbols hundreds of winters past. Glaive entered the circle on the longest night, dazed from the altitude and the day’s climb. The stars spread overhead in magnificent twists that spiraled on themselves in his woozy vision.
He built a small fire in the center and threw rare herbs into the flames. Sitting within the puffs of fragrant smoke, inhaling deep into his belly, he sang in his mother’s tongue:
I am of my ancestors, Ah! Ah! I am of my ancestors.
Guide me, Glaives before, Come! Come! Guide me, Glaives before.
I am of my ancestors, Ah! Ah! I am of my ancestors.
Guide me…
When the words had become meaningless to his dazzled mind, he felt the presence of others. “Announce yourselves,” said Glaive, gripping the axe at his belt.
“I am Glaive, who cleared the scourge of sickle-clawed raptors,” gruffed the first.
“I am Glaive, who destroyed the White Mammoth,” snarled the second.
“And I am Glaive, who defeated the firewyrm that gnawed the roots of the elder tree,” hissed the third. “For what have you summoned us?”
Glaive stood, gripping his axe. “Ancestors, great tales are told of your hunts, and we keep your trophies sacred. But the Kall Peaks have been tamed by those gone before. The Grangor live in peace. How will I earn my place in the hunt of my ancestors after my death?”
“You must travel beyond the territory of the Grangor,” said the first.
“You will be the first to collect trophies from the outside world.” said the second.
“There is a place faraway where battles are waged for the rights to a powerful well,” said the third. “You must sail to the Halcyon Fold.”
Glaive shuddered. “I do not like the water.”
The ancestors chuckled.
“We are always with you,” assured the third.
Glaive nodded. “My thanks, ancestors. I will heed your guidance.”
At dawn, Glaive began his trek down to the port of Trostan.
One autumn, Glaive went ice fish hunting (for there is no word in the Grangor tongue like “fishing;” the Grangor use the word “hunt” for anything that is acquired through skill or cunning). He drilled a hole in the ice at the center of the great lake, impaled a wiggling ground-dwelling invertebrate onto the hook of his twine-dangling fish hunting weapon and hunkered down into his fish hunting stance, which was a comfortable sitting position. After some time his head nodded with the impending vision quest, which is how Glaive would explain later that he had fallen asleep, and that is when he heard a deep, booming voice.
Greetings, Grangor. Tell me your sorrows.
Glaive startled out of his dream and looked over his left and then his right shoulder. No one was about. He peered into his drilled fish hunting hole. “What is a sorrows?”
Sorrow is the feeling of emptiness that follows a great loss, replied the voice in a cold, bubbly way from under the surface.
“Can’t say I’ve ever felt that,” said Glaive.
Sorrow is felt when a loved one dies.
“All living things die, then are reunited in the Nether realm,” replied Glaive. “Why should I feel emptiness for that?”
It is the feeling of prey escaping.
Glaive scoffed. “Prey that runs from me dies with my blade in its spine.”
Have you never been rejected by a female?
“That too, could never happen,” said Glaive, and brushed a bit of lint off of his shoulder.
Congratulations, said the voice, and the thick and meaty arm of a water troll burst through the ice, a great axe in its fist.You have been chosen to carry the great named axe, Sorrowblade, that was thrown into this icy deepness long ago to protect mankind. Only you, great hunter, will not fall to its terrors.
Glaive took the weapon in his hands and tested its weight, marveled at the dynamic harmony of head and helve. The axe handle glowed red with a foreign force. “I’ve never seen its like. What manner of power is this?”
It is called technology, said the voice. It is the harnessing of the power of fire, lightning, magic, the sun, even the Churn.
“Are you sure you don’t want it?”
It makes the fish sad, said the voice, farther away now.Now go, and tell those machine-makers to stop dumping their stuff here.
THE THEFT OF THE WIZARD’S BREW
The roaring-est, meanest, and most frightening of all the forest creatures, the beheader of the Giant Spider, the King of the Forest, respected far and wide for his fearlessness and strength, the lion, had a terrible secret.
He was a coward.
At night he laid in his bed of silk and worried. There were so many problems in his kingdom. He’d defeated the Giant Spider, sure, but only because she’d been asleep at the time. There were trolls in the caves, and wolf packs, hungry bears and tricky foxes, not to mention wicked witches and those tiny gnats that bit him inside his ears. He couldn’t even nap in the sun without worry, for he was blind, and so might fall asleep in a field of poppies and be carried away by winged harpies. The raccoons and the squirrels came to him with their endless territorial disputes and his wise compromises satisfied neither group.
When anxieties set to whirling in his mind, the king would lap up a little of the wizard’s brew. The concoction tasted like fire and gave him courage.
One morning, the king awoke to the sharp scent of the wizard’s brew in his nose and wheezy snores in his ears. He shook out his mane and several fairies fell out of it. The fairies had found his brew and drank up every last drop. Made courageous by the brew, they had braided the king’s mane with ribbons while he slept, and kissed his nose, and lifted up his lips to poke at his teeth before falling asleep on and around him in his silk bed.
The king roared. “Look what you’ve done, you miserable bugs! How will I rule the kingdom now?”
The fairies startled awake and flew out of range of the lion’s swiping claws. With their tongues poked out, they flew away.
The king paced as the sun rose. In the glade, the crows and the woodpeckers would already be waiting for him to pass judgment on their longstanding noise complaints against one another. The lion heard his heart beating fast in his ears. The creatures of the forest would all find out his terrible secret if he didn’t find a quick solution.
Shaking the ribbons out of his mane, the lion grabbed his lion-headed axe. He had only one friend who could help him: the King of the City of Emeralds. Off he stalked toward the city, ignoring the birdy squabbling behind him.
