Iranon’s father was Wulfhern, a
warrior of Clan Grannish, and his mother was a Vanir woman taken as a child
from a raided village. His mother was
gifted with the Sight, and traveled often in her dreams, awaking to tell
strange tales of distant lands, or screaming with the emptiness of the outer
dark. His father loved her despite her
strange gift, and defended her from those in the village that thought her
cursed. When Wulfhern was killed in the
battle of Vanaheim, Iranon became the brunt of many jokes, his eccentric mother
and red hair marking him as an outsider.
When at age 13 he killed one of his tormenters with an axe handle, the
aggression stopped. His mother was
eventually driven to madness by her visions, and he booked passage to the
south, hearing that the leechcraft of Aquilonia could heal the madness that
afflicted her. The master of the caravan
was a Stygian spy, however, and sold his passengers into slavery. Iranon was parted with his mother and sold to
the south, forced to ply the oars of a stygian galley for two years. At the age of 16, he dove overboard during a
storm, and washed ashore on the southern coast.
Half-mad with hunger, wandered inland barefoot and in tattered
rags. He was ambushed by a Pictish
hunting party, and killed several with his bare hands before taking up their
copper axes against them. This assault
in the dappled light of the southern jungle drove his mind from him, and for
weeks and then months he lived like a beast in the mud, slipping forth in
darkness to slay beast and man alike. He
adorned himself in the likeness of a Pict, and slayed mercilessly, howling like
a night gaunt. He fed on roots and raw
flesh, and humanity was lost to him.
One day, with a pictish arrow
through his thigh and a party of angry warriors behind him, Iranon came upon
the stone walls of a trader’s city on the southern coast. The sight of men and
women dressed in clean clothing, standing tall in the sunlight jogged his
memory, and the madness left him. He
limped in to the city and lay in an alley, where he was found by an old
Cimmerian man. Iwah the Traveler treated
his wounds and drew the fever forth from his veins, and his memory returned to
him. He worked on the docks, learning of
the wide world from the talk of sailors and merchantmen. During this time, his
hatred of Stygian slave-takers grew, and he vowed to avenge his mother and his
countrymen.
After earning silver enough to book
passage to his homeland, Iranon arrived friendless and cold in Conarch village
after years in the south. At home once
again in the mountains and taverns of his childhood, he recalled his love of
the Cimmerian wilds. Haunted by strange
dreams, Iranon wandered into the wilderness, and learned to live among beasts
as a man, hewing logs into a shelter and skinning his prey for their
leather. Though the madness of the
southern jungles has left him, he dreams often of Picts sliding through the
darkness, and keeps a wolf-skin pouch full of Pict teeth round his neck. As the son of both a warrior and a mystic, he
strives to walk a middle path. He works
now to understand his dreams, and has vowed to use the fighting-madness honed
in the darkness of the south against the enemies of his homeland.
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