My name is Corum, I had a last name once but it has been forgotten. The history you are about to read may seem short for one of the elven breathren, yet I have seen much in my life that is painful and do not wish to remember. Born in a small Sylvan Elf community far to the west to a loving mother and father. From a young age I was enthralled by the woods, even more so than most of my kind. I thank Mielikki that this was the case for it probably saved my young life. On my twenty-fourth birthday slavers came to my village and my life as i knew it ended, all around me lay my dead kin those that were not killed or taken for the slave trade scattered at the sight when they pulled themselves from the rubble of my once wondrous village. My mother came to slightly after I did and fled into the woods at the sight of my father slain. After I came out of my grief I realized that I would have my revenge on those that killed my father and find my mother if she were still alive. During the years after the slaughter of my village i lived off the land. About five years in the woods I came to an ancient place in the deep forest. I was drawn to it by a pulsing green light on the horizon. When I finally reached the source of the glow i found myself in a grove of trees that were ancient. In the centre of the grove was a young looking elven maiden though her skin had a slightly green hue to it. When I came closer she looked up to me and spoke to me without opening her mouth, speaking only with her mind. Looking into her eyes I saw great pain and sorrow. What passed between us shall forever be etched into my mind and will not pass to another living soul. Suffice it to say I slept in the grove that night and when I awoke I found that the maiden was gone, when I went to the spring fed pool inside the grove I saw my reflection for the first time clearly in many years. My once brown hair and hazel eyes were now both green. I do not remember how long I spent inside that grove in perfect peace though I began to realize that I could actually speak to some on the animals and manipulate the wilderness around me in small ways. One morning when I awoke I heard voices. They seemed to be coming closer to the grove. To this day I do not know what came over me but I stood firm in the centre of the grove with a wooden mace in my hand that i had carved and waited for the voices to close on me. Eventually two figures entered the end of the grove and stopped dead in their tracks and stared at me. They both had fresh blood on their clothing and swords at their side and sacks dripping blood on their backs. I stared at them and said " Those who shall destroy the creatures of the woods have no place in this holy place, leave at once or parish under the wrath of the goddess Mielikki." In all honesty i do not know why i said those words that day, they simply seemed apropriate, aparently the two men didn't take a single adolecent elf with a stick in his hands and no armour seriously for the drew their swords, dropped their sacks and began to walk towards me. Though they only took three steps before lightning and fire streaked from the heavens to stike them down. I barely saw this though as i fell unconcious moments after they died from the exertion. I came to in what seemed to still be the grove yet there was a small campfire and three tents. I myself was wrapped withing thick woolen blankets. I sat up quickly not knowing what to expect and a hand grabed my shoulder. I grabbed at the hand and heard a yelp of pain from slightly behind me. I then heard something i had not heard in years. Laughter. All around me was laughter and then the largest man I had ever seen stepped between me and the fire. "Hey Edgar the young wolf have a sharper bite then you thought?" said the big man to the man nursing his hand beside me. "I guess so Robert, damndest thing I ever did see something so slight having so much stregth. How do you think he got here? And what in the name of the abyss happened to those pochers we found scorched all to hell?" "Not sure on either account perhaps the boy can tell us." at which point he sat down beside me."So lad... who are you?" I pulled back a little further from the large man."Corum." Robert looked and me a chuckled a little more."Don't trust us I see. Can't say I blame you. Though had me ment you harm why would we have made you comfortable first, eh?" I looked up and him and for the first time looked him in the eyes and saw warmth."Not that I don't trust you, more that I don't trust anyone." At this he leaned back and roared with mirth."Well your honest and to the point I'll give you that Corum. Though how did you come to this place?" "I was guilded" "Guided? By what or whom?" I quickly explained what had happened what seemed years ago though could only have been months at most. They looked scepticle at best openly dismissing me as insane at worst until the sun came up and shone off my deep green hair. "Ok then Corum assuming that we believe your tail what happened to those men? we have been chasing them for weeks now and they have avoided and eluded us as well as killing two of our number." Again I found I had the answer without truely knowing what I was saying"Well they came here with hands bloodied from the forests pain. Mielikki struck them down with my guidence." I said this so a matter a factly that no one even questioned what I said they simply stared at me with awe. I later found out that these four men were a band of rangers dedicated to the forest gods protecting the great woods in the east. the men that I had aparently killed had been pouching in the woods for months taking the pelts and leaving the corpses in their wake. Two days it took me to regain my strength. On the morning on the second day robert came up to me. "Corum lad we could use a healer and someone that is obviously in the favor of the Goddess. If you had not figured it out earlier this place is an ancient temple dedicated to the Goddess Mielikki. I can only assume that the maiden you saw was Mielikki in a mortal form. We can train you the warrior arts if you like and offer you comradery and friends. The choice is yours though make your decision fast as we leave in the evening." And with that he left into the woods. Suffice it to say I took Roberts offer and joined his troup of forest gaurdians. For 10 years I prayed and trained in the warrior arts from the rangers. At the end of ten years I felt drawn once again to the grove in teh heart of the woods. I said my goodbyes and got the scedualed movement for the troup so I could meet them at a later time and headed to the grove. When i arrived I found that the maiden from years ago. Again she spoke in my mind with warth. She spoke of continueing my training when she motioned to the figures behind her. As she motioned the beings came into sharp clarity. Arrayed behind her were a myrid number of woodland spirits. And again my training started anew this time in the art of the weave. I spent years in that grove training under the tutalige of the spirits of the woods. When the finally deemed my training complete I left the grove. Another year was spent finding my family of rangers in the woods again. Again we roamed protecting the forests from harm. I spent my time honing my proficiancy in the weave and healing the wounded, once or twice teh rangers allowed me to go on the hunt with them once my warrior skills became enough to adaquately defend myself in combat. Nearly 40 years had past when Robert came to me him becoming an old man and me coming into my manhood. He said that I had to go into a place in the woods alone for one last training session. When I asked him to explain himself because as far as I was concerned my training was complete at least as far as it could be with others he simply looked at me with that anerving grin of his and turned around and walked away. The next day he took me to a path and pushed me off told me they would stay in the same place for two weeks. I came to the end of the path and found a grotto. A very empty grotto filled with willow trees. I didn't know what was hapening at this point and didn't question it, I simply made camp and settled down for the night. In the middle of the night I was woken by sounds around me, when i brought a mystical light source into existance I was surrounded by the most wondrous sight I had ever seen. I was surrounded by nymphs. they were the denizens of the grotto. I will not go into details of the next week and a half but I never questioned robert again as long as I knew him.
The next twenty years flew past with little incident. Though as I grew into my manhood most of the people that had acted as a seregot family to me grew old and began to die. Only two out of the twenty person band were elven. In my ninties I buried many friends. Calling the very soil of the woods to take their bodies to the forest gods and goddesses. On my hundreth birthday two years after Robert had died his son came to our camp with news for me. He had found an elven woman meeting my mother's description was living in a human comunity. I left the next day to find her. It took me nearly two weeks to arive at the comunity. Considering the last humans other then rangers I had seen had tried to kill me I truely did not know what to expect. Though the thought of seeing my mother after all these years would not allow me not go. When I entered the village I was suprised by how welcome I was made. When I arrived at her residence I knew it was her at once, though she did not recognize me. When I tried to force the issue with a gentle mental comunication she screamed out and ran into the woods yet again. Her husband invited me in for dinner and explained that when he found her in the woods she was wild and barely above mental abilities of an animal. He had spent years nursing her back to mental health and she still had some problems whenever memories came back. Everytime she remembered anything she ran into the woods and disappeared for a couple days. He said she was getting better but the wounds in her mind were still to fresh. He suggested that i leave and return in after she had time to heal from the knowledge that her son was still alive. I agreed to return in 20 years time. For the next twenty years where the longest ones of my life. I never forgot my promise to return and on the same day I left exactly twenty years later I returned. My mother was still wary and obviously uncomfortable with my presance but at least she tried to appear to be at ease with me and for that I will always be proud of her. We spoke for days and after about two weeks had past when I was preparing to leave her husband who was human and had visibly gotten older in the twenty years then either me or my mother had came to me and told me the he and my mother had had a son. I was stunned. I had a brother. He told me that I would be proud of him. He was a ranger on the moonmaiden Selune. So again my departure was delayed as I gained more knowledge that I had more family out in the world then I had ever dreamed.
Aparently my brother's name was Orpheus he had left nearly a year ago for a City across the western ocean named Shadow. I thanked him for the information and left immediately for this town named Shadow, to seek out my half-brother and find my future.