Difference between revisions of "Jessie Sweetwater"

Latest revision as of 17:37, 31 May 2018

I was raised by a toady. People hear toady, they think a repellent, unscrupulous, broken thing that snivels and licks the boots of more powerful monsters. Yeah, that. That's my role model.

His name is probably not Lurch, but he has forgotten any other so that is the only way to get his attention now. His spine is bent, his shoulder a mass of shattered bone fused solid like a heavy mushroom cap trophy to whatever horrid trauma he survived to win it. He won't look you in the eye but if he did you would see one a clear grey and the other a swollen mass engorged with blood and perpetually weeping pus. That is the only face of love I have ever known.

Lurch brought me to this village as an infant, and to their credit the people did not immediately drive him out with torches and pitchforks. It probably helped that he was protecting a foundling babe, and also that my skin was the color of dirty chalk and not the expected green of orc-kin.

They gave him a little hut outside the palisade and some occasional charity. Perhaps that was as close as the decent folk could come to leaving us for the wolves. If that was the case, they underestimated Lurch. As unsightly and broken as he appeared, he was so very strong and for anyone but me quite ruthless. The stories go that when I was hungry I would shriek like a wounded beast, but rather than comfort me he would open the front door and wait. Some curious beast would come in looking for an easy meal and Lurch would snap them in half with his bare hands. I was raised on meat and swaddled in fresh skins. I can still make a convincing mimicry of a crying baby to this day.

I had to teach myself everything that was beyond Lurch's grasp, like reading and talking in complete sentences. Eventually I found the lab notes of Solamni the Demon Binder and I learned the secret of my conception.

Solamni wrote of sending his faithful Lurch to purchase an Orc Sow and make certain that she had her blood up. He spoke of his experiments, of "controlling variables", of doing the most frightening things in the most detached and cruel manner. He was literally gloating at his own cunning, how this particular sacrifice demanded a woman and child at the moment of birth. How smart was he to buy an orc and father a runt for the purpose of shorting a technicality? No heros would come to rescue a nameless orc bitch.

Funny thing about being really smart at one thing, you overlook that you might not actually know everything. Three times the tower was assaulted by increasing numbers of orcs, led by a ragged orc with no chief furs. Solamni mocked their efforts, how Lurch repelled them almost without need of Solamni's skeletal minions. The third time they made it all the way to the ritual chamber before Lurch crushed the interloper's head like a grape. Oh how the Sow wailed at that sight. Solamni said she was still weeping weeks later when the labor pangs started.

The notes on the ritual halted suddenly, and the page was obscured by an obscene quantity of blood. I managed to get the final details from Lurch. When I asked him about Solamni and if he was my father, he said "Ayuh, Master dadi"

Lurch was no storyteller, so it took some convincing and some puzzling to get this much from him, but I persisted. He told me this much over a number of days.

"Master make bebe. Master say Lurch keep. Master lie. Master want stab bebe in mami. Lurch angry. Lurch stab Master. Master miss bebe, not miss mami. Lurch sorry hurt Master. Lurch bad. Cut bebe free, make better. Lurch make bebe strong. Master whisper to Lurch. Tell Lurch put Master in bebe body. No more stuck in Lurch head. Lurch be good next time. Let Master finish song."

I left that night.