Just Be There Blog

An old friend and The NaNo spur

Still November 1st here, barely.

I am revisiting an old friend. Malyn's story is one that persists even when my muse is distant and cold. I often equate Malyn as the name of my muse, but I think she is more than just an urge to write. For me, especially this time of year when writing.com is all a buzz with NaNoWriMo, I find my thoughts turned toward three characters whom I've the most intimate knowledge: Malyn the Vosian barbarian tseravas born from a DND Birthright game; Cassini, a half gypsy and half Morevni wainwright with a bit of background with the local thieves guild; and Gwendyln, a Celtic styled Cleric whom was chosen by her Goddess, not the other way around.

Of the three characters, Malyn is the one with the strongest pull upon me.

Tonight, once again, I've written another intro to a story that wants to be told, a story only I can tell, yet, has successfully evaded the telling over the years. Malyn was created in the fall of 2000, a year before I even knew of the existance of Writing.com.



A hush had fallen on the small five wagon caravan. The barbarian warrioress looked up briefly and caught a patch of bright blue as she rode slowly along side a covered wagon. The forest road was nothing like the taiga of her own country, yet she found a comfort in the closeness of the trees. And, even though most of her life had been spent in a small village surrounded by wind swept tundra and rolling hills at the base of the mountains of the Gnollfells to the North, she had opportunity to travel to the southern forests of Rzhlev and hunt the venison and bear found there. The Forests of her lands were a subartic coniferous evergreen wall dominated by firs and spruces.

This forest was adapted to the warmer climes and though still coniferous and evergreen, the trees dominating were pines and larch. The smell was familair but wrong at the same time. Malyn looked for the crow, raven and blackbird she was used to seeing, but they were fewer in number. The birds in this southern domain were brightly colored and melodious.

A warrioress a long way from her homeland, Malyn rode as a flanking guard for the train, as one of five mercenaries hired to protect two families and a Dwarf Priest of Moradin on their journey to a place called the Giantdowns. She knew nothing of these lands and found herself wondering at the circumstances which had brought her to be working as a mercenary guard on the other side of her known world.

She'd started out as a standard guard and guide for a merchant train of Brecht Traders. Malyn had accepted the offer to act as a guard through the Voslands of Rzhlev with her cousins Bohan and Yasha after her Uncle had come to them and said the Brecht traders needed safe passage to the capital. It was a pleasant couple weeks and Malyn needed to leave the village after the shock of her Mother's death, early that spring. Malyn remembered looking at each house and warehouse and official building and the faces of every villager as they passed through on their departure. She knew that she would not be coming back. She had no plans to return and could not visualize her return, so Malyn knew she would now leave the only home she'd ever known. But it was an unsettled feeling because there was no vision of where her path would lead. She was drawn along as a toy pulled along by a string. Her feet placed distance between her and all that she had known, but Malyn felt she had no control over the compulsion and that she must obey. She knew she was on the road to find herself. She suspected she was on the final journey of her existance.

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