D1
Derick Sawyer, Hobbit Warlock
I never thought this would be my life. I wanted to be a soldier, a member of the Southfarthing militia protecting the fields from fire happy goblins. I thought I was a hero. I guess I was wrong.
I had never seen a goblin war machine before. It was huge and terrible. The great iron blades spinning with such violence, I froze. I guess I wasn't the only one, they tell me that the saws cut through our whole unit like wheat. Horrible, wet, red wheat.
When I woke up, my legs were gone. The sergeant told me that the machine dipped when it hit a gopher hole. He told me I was lucky, but his eyes didn't mean it. I didn't even wait for him to leave before the tears took me. My brother would have called me a child for blubbering in front of people like that. He would have, if he hadn't been turned into mulch right before I became an expert at sitting.
Eventually they sent me home. They had healers, but not the kind that can grow back a leg or two and even if they did they weren't wasting them on incompetent sons of woodsmen with soiled breeches and clean blades. I didn't blame them, I wasn't any good to them as anything but a motivator to show the fresh recruits what not to do on their first day of battle.
Father watched me pretty close. He caught me trying to wobble my cart into the sawmill. He caught me trying to eat the black mushrooms we use to kill the rats in the grindhouse. So I made sure he was really going to town before I tried to hang myself in the toolshed.
Not sure if it was luck or stupidity, but for whatever reason it turns out that a depressed, underfed hobbit boy with no legs just doesn't weigh enough to hang properly. I bobbed on the end of the rope like a gasping fish, but it wasn't quite enough to push me free of the green world and into the Stygian afterworld where I was hopeful that I would be reunited with my feet.
It was hours that I dangled, but Father really was gone for the day. Still, someone came. No, now I know that isn't true. Not someone, someTHING.
He was big folk, which should have been my first warning. He was a black that I had never seen, like midnight in a cave black. Not human black. He wore fine furs and linens of purest white, and no mud or dirt dared to come near him. He opened the door like he knew I was there and when he saw me, he laughed.
He cut me down and let me catch my wind, laughing his confident booming laugh. When I could talk again I asked him to finish what I started. He had a broad silver machete at his hip, he could end me with one stroke. This set him to laughing again. Then he gave me a choice.
"No, tiny man, Papa Starlight not here to put you down. Papa like you the way you is, all full of useless hate for the whole world. Papa think you would bite the ankles of the Titans with all of you hate. No, Papa think you should live. The question is, how?"
"Papa let you pick today. This powerful rare gift, most who meet Papa don't get to be so lucky as this. Here is what Papa can do for you, little Derrick Sawyer."
When he spoke my name, my heart chilled. Not because he knew without me telling him, everybody for miles knew my story. It chilled me because his knowing me meant that I was in his sight, that something powerful and dangerous had noticed me and I would not be squirming away to be forgotten by it. I was SEEN, like an ant at a picnic, and I felt just as small under his gaze.
"Here is what you pick. little half a halfling. You pick my right hand and Papa take this chopper and get rid of the rest of you extras. Papa take you hands, you arms, maybe Papa take you nose if it stick out far enough. You want take Papa by the right hand, boy?" His voice was laughing but his eyes were dead serious and I froze just like I did in front of that Goblin Thresher. Somehow I knew that even a blink would be as good as a hearty "Yes sir, please carve me up like a Christmas Goose".
"You don't like Papa's right hand, Derrick Sawyer? That's too bad. Papa's right hand is the generous one." At this he laughed a bit more. "All right Derrick Sawyer, maybe you want to take Papa's left hand. You take the left hand, Papa give you legs, but don't you go thinkin' they yours, Derrick Sawyer. They Papa's legs and they take you where Papa want you be. You take the left hand, you get the legs, you get power that Papa give you to stand, to walk, to bed yourself a woman again. And Papa give you other power, power over man and beast he grant you. But it not your power, Derrick Sawyer. It belong to Papa, just like them fine legs. You take Papa's left hand, Derrick Sawyer belong to Papa too. Make no mistake bout that."
You choose now, Derrick Sawyer. Which hand you want on you? Papa tell you this much, if you choose the right, Papa respect you for it. That would be right impressive, that what Papa thinks. But Papa don't think you gonna do nothing impressive today, are you Derrick Sawyer? Choose now, Derrick Sawyer. Show Papa what you got deep down."
I took Papa by the left hand, just like he knew I would. I bound myself that day as a warlock of Papa Starlight, the Black Man, Nyarlathotep. I stand on dead white legs that let me run, but I can't run from Papa Starlight. Sometimes he asks nothing of me, he gives me spells and powers and lets me do what I like with them. But sometimes he gives me things to do. They might be silly things or things that make no sense, but I know that they have a purpose somehow and I know that Papa Starlight has no kindness in him. I do what I am told, knowing that it is chewing away pieces of my soul, knowing that if I don't get free of him that I will eventually become just like these cursed legs, an empty tool for the Crawling Chaos to consume.
