Flynnvas Merryweather's page

Sonna was raised in the lap of luxury, but his childhood was anything but comfortable. He had the
unfortunate luck to be born into slavery, to a mother indentured to one of Cheliax's countless noble
families. Sonna was sold a half dozen times to different nobles during his childhood but this is the
fate of most of the ‘slips’ of that nation – the term the nobility of that nation used for the small folk.

Halflings are much valued as slaves in Cheliax since they take up less room and since their inborn
optimism ironically stunts escape urges. Halflings born into slavery in Cheliax are prone to think of
their lot in life as "lucky." They are fond of saying, "At least we aren't living in the gutter or starving!"

Nevertheless, halflings who rankle at the concept of enslavement do appear. Halflings like Sonna.
Growing up a slave in the devil-haunted empire of Cheliax exposed him to a shocking range of
decadence and debauchery. He learned from a young age how to say what his superiors wanted to
hear, and as he grew older, these skills often secured him less onerous jobs. While his kin toiled in
basement washrooms or tended hellhound stables, he was taught to play the flute so he could
entertain at family gatherings. Yet Sonna was not blind to the discomfort of his brothers and sisters,
and when he learned that a dozen of his kin were to be sacrificed to a devil as an offering to seal a
new trade contract, Sonna knew the time to act had come. Taking advantage of his increased
mobility in the manor, it was a relatively simple trick to light a few fires in secret corners and then
ensure that all of his halfling kin were safe in the slave's quarters. That night more than thirty
Halfling slaves fled the city, heading north deep into the mountains. It was the only place the
authorities wouldn’t look for them, thinking that the land was too harsh for their small, frail bodies.

They were wrong. Because halflings are strong and plucky folk.

The renegade halflings struggled through those first few winters, but after establishing good relations with the tribes of barbarians and druids who lived there, they not only lived but thrived. Halflings are as adaptable as humans and within a generation they had adopted the druids’ ways and their respect for nature and the endurance of life.

It was into this environment Flynn was born. The Halflings numbered in the hundreds by the time he was sired and many of the warriors of his people had become beast riders, using the strength of the wolves of the mountains to supplement their own wit and guile and between them and the wisdom of the druids, the strength of the barbarians, the colony thrived.

Flynn was born to a sense of freedom that many of his folk can only dream of. He could climb the Kodar mountains and look out upon ever square inch of land he had ever visited and much that he had not. It wasn’t enough. He was possessed of a wanderlust that couldn’t be quenched by the occasional trade visit into Varisia. He was a small person in such a large world but if he couldn’t stand tall he would fly!

None of his kin had ever considered trying to tame one of the mighty rocs that swooped through the valleys and in truth had he tried to scale to one of the nests he would have found himself feeding one of the chicks rather than claiming one. But it was a stroke of luck that always seemed to float around Flynn that saw a bird, tiny by comparison to her brethren, fall from one such nest. Weak and unable to fly, the mother had clearly abandoned it as a runt. Well Halflings were runts too, so her took the bird, named him Skyfall and, after months of patient training, took to the skies! He had never felt so alive as he had with the wind in his hair and the ground rushing toward him like a hammer.

Skyfall saved his life when the Harvest came. They saw the fires first, huge plumes of smoke that billowed up from far away Westcrowne and Egorian. The flights over that region terrified Flynn as he saw great waves of people streaming out of the cities, headed north into what they perceived was the safety of the mountains. And yet whatever sickness was among them started to destroy them from within, small pockets would break out and attack the others and soon whole camps were overrun but still they made their inexorable way north.

Flynn watched it all from Sky’s back, feeling at once helpless and amazingly powerful to bear witness to everything below him. But he knew it wouldn’t be long until his own village was overrun. The druids refused to listen to reason though. They had become aware of cultists to dark gods performing rituals throughout the wilderness, ostensibly to bring out this Armageddon. If they could stop the rituals they could stop the Harvest and in their brave foolishness they chose to stand instead of fly. Flynn was assigned to follow and observe one of these sects and he watched with fascination the organisation of this group. They had contacts as far south as Cheliax and as far West as Varisia, the network must have been huge! But alone, there was nothing he could do to stop them.

It wasn’t long before the inevitable happened. Returning from a flight to secure food for the village, Flynn was devastated to see the Walkers roaming around between the houses. He thanked his lucky stars that he, like Skyfall, had no other family. Because it would have killed him to see them in that state. He swooped time and again, his lance – Sender – putting out of their misery former friends and allies. But it was not enough. One of them clawed him as he went past, the wound becoming blackened and sickly almost immediately. And yet, though it was slow to heal and the skin still bore the mark, he never turned into that thing he now hated most.

Since that day he has done nothing but scour the land from hundreds of feet in the air. He has nothing left but the desire for revenge on those cultists he saw that fateful day and all their kind who killed the world.

He has not always been alone in his search. The mountains were full of tribes, especially West where the Shoanti carved a hard life out of the granite stone of the Varisian mountains. It was there he met a young human with no name, no family. He simply ‘called’ himself Lives. Together they travel, headed out of the mountains looking for survivors and, more importantly, those responsible.