Vire Locke's page

Vire was born to Sir Frederickson Locke. Sandpoint has had few heroes and so when Sir Frederickson Locke, a renowned adventurer moved to the town, the small population there was overjoyed. Not long thereafter the Swing Tree Tavern became a frequent locale of Frederickson when he wasn’t out exploring the wilds. There he took the fancy of a particular tavern girl, Kandra? Kanma? Kandi? It must have been Kandy he decided.

Things were going particularly well for Sir Locke, as they always tended to do, up until Kandy went and got pregnant.

She made it no small secret that she was to be the mother of Sir Frederickson’s child and the community responded by celebrating for three whole days, until all the cheap brandy had been run out.

Tragedy struck not long after however, Kandy died giving birth to Locke’s child. This further complicated matters greatly for Sir Frederickson, he was already to be a father but now he was also a sole caretaker.

He couldn’t give up his life of adventure, not so easily so he began the hunt for a nanny. Unfortunately for Sir Locke his wealth was well known and any applicant for the position demanded outrageous sums to provide their services. One particularly outlandish woman asked for over a silver a day. This wouldn’t do at all.

Sir Locke spent the next three years at home and they were a miserable time indeed. Taking care of a child was not at all like slaying undead and battling with dragons and bandits. Every night he would go to bed dreaming of the day he could again return to the frontiers, and every day woke to his nightmare at home.

Finally he could take it no longer, the boy was three and that was good enough in his book. He loaded him up into a cart one day and set back off to his life of adventure. Vire spent much of his next years traveling with his father to all sorts of exotic and dangerous places. He cheered him on as he slew a powerful blue dragon, watched him battle a tribe of Orcs, and saw him best a pair of trolls.

Every year or so they would return to Sandpoint for a short month of rest and re-supply before heading back out to find more adventure. It would seem this is how Vire’s life would play out until his adulthood. That is until his return with his father to Sandpoint just after his eighth birthday.

When Vire was eight he began to take particular notice of a peculiar woman he had spotted around town. Vire had seen this woman many times in the last month or so and it seem to him, though he couldn’t be sure why, that the woman was following him anytime he left the house. His father assured him that he was just being shy and that no one meant him any harm.

To prove it the next time Sir Locke spotted the lady he forced Vire to go talk with her, while he nipped off to do a bit of shopping. Vire was to wait here and he would be back in a few minutes.

Unfortunately, Vire’s fear of the woman was well founded, as he stumbled through introductory words and greeting a slow and terrible smile formed on the woman’s face; and before Vire could finish his sentence he found himself completely unable to move. The next moment the woman bent down and wrapped her arms around Vire as in a deep loving embrace, and then; everything went black.

He felt the wind rushing through his hair and against his body but there was nothing to see, pressure pushed in around him from all sides, there was a distinct lack of sound, and to his horror he couldn’t breathe! The woman was going to suffocate me he thought frantically, but then as soon as the sensation swept over him, it was gone.

The marketplace he had just moments before been standing was now replaced with a dimly lit earthy room that Vire assumed must be a basement judging by his own house. The woman picked up Vire and carried him over to a large raised dais surrounded by symbols he couldn’t recognize and ringed with candles in an odd shape.

Laying Vire down on the dais, the woman stood up and walked over to a terrible black figurine. Slowly she reached out and caressed its cheek, as though afraid at any moment it might spring to life and bite. Seconds later the room began to fill with other people, arriving much as Vire and the woman must have.

When the new arrivals saw who lay across the altar a slow rumble of laughter swept throughout the room. Vire’s eye were wide with terror, what had these people planned to do with him? The woman who had brought him here began to speak in a language Vire didn’t understand. It was a hoarse, throaty and harsh language it made him uncomfortable just to hear it spoken.

After a few more moments of the speech the woman stepped in front of Vire, before she turned to face the crowd again. Resuming his speech she made to indicate to Vire then, she reached down into a brazier on the ground full of flames. Vire was shocked; the woman winced heavily and let out moans of pain? Enjoyment? Vire wasn’t quite sure. Nevertheless when the woman withdrew her hand there she held a long wickedly curved knife.

The woman stepped over Vire her eyes looked deranged staring down at him. She reached down and cut the clothes from Vire’s body, the laughter in the room increased. His eyes a mixture of tears and fear Vire’s flinched or would have could he as the woman traced one long finger over the small boy’s body before without warning sinking the dagger down into his chest.

Vire looked down at the long protruding blade coming from his body and felt pain, pain unlike anything he’d known; and then he was falling away into blackness. He again felt as he had minutes ago when traveling with the woman to this dire place, that seemed hours ago now.
As he fell he felt something, faint at first, like gossamer against the skin. Then it began to grow, he felt a stifling heat before becoming aware of a presence squeezing itself into his mind, one that was old and unknowable.

He was no longer falling through darkness he was awake in the dimly lit basement again, he could move again but he was not the one controlling his body. The crowd’s look of triumph quickly turned to apprehension. Then something hot ran down his hands and fingers like a liquid. Something raised his hand and he saw he was holding what looked like a spear of fiery light. The congregation began to yell and scream, but then he was upon them. Vire’s body moved with a terrible grace and purpose as he passed amongst the women and men, severed limbs, opening arteries and taking lives.

It was over in a matter of heartbeats, the room awash in the screams of the dying. The rage was gone now; his body was once again his own. He clenched the spear of light tightly as it steamed with burning blood. Scared, Vire fled up the stairs flew through the slightly ajar basement door and out into sunlight once again. He was clearly still inside Sandpoint but couldn’t recognize where he was. He began to panic, the spear of fire still in his hands and covered from head to toe in blood, Vire only just now faintly realized that he still had the dagger lodged firmly in his chest.

He began to run, it was lucky for him perhaps that the streets were relatively empty that day, for a sight such as this could never end well. Only one person strode down this street, a tall woman in robes. Vire rushed to her tears pouring down his face.

Tuyena looked down at this teary-eyed blood-soaked child sobbing uncontrollably as the spear of fire in his hands pulsed ominously. She put the child into a deep slumber and carried him off quickly to her house at the end of the lane. There was a long moment’s pause as she looked down at the small boy lying unconscious on her floor before she reached down and pulled out the dagger from his chest. To her great relief the wound began to close instantly.

Vire awoke to a strange house; he remembered vaguely his encounter with the robed woman. His forehead throbbed with a dull ache, he reached up to rub it but found that he could not. Looking over he saw himself chained to a bed with manacles. Afraid, he began to rattle them violently when he heard a soft voice.

“I am sorry for the bindings” the voice said. “But they’re as much for your protection as for mine. Once we’ve had an opportunity to talk thoroughly I assure you I will take them off. Tell me what happened to you, to the best of your knowledge.” Vire began to recount his sightings of the woman, his father’s introduction to her, how he was transported to the basement, the people and how they laughed at him, the presence that entered him, at the final part the words caught in his throat and he wasn’t able to continue. There had been so much blood, at this Vire looked to his chest and noticed both the dagger and blood was absent.

“I took the liberty of cleaning you, I hope you don’t mind. I would have clothed you but I’m afraid I don’t have anything that fits. I’ll get you something in the morning” Said the voice. “I am Tuyena, who are you sweetheart” she continued.

“My name is Vire” he replied.

“It’s been a pleasure to meet you then, Vire. Come the morning we’ll see about trying to find your father, I know you mentioned him. But for now I have prepared some soup for you. Eat, and then it’s back to bed for you I think, you’ve had an awful day”. Tuyena continued while unchaining Vire from the bed and sitting a bowl of hot soup next to his on a night stand.

Vire gratefully ate his soup and a few minutes later was sound asleep. He awoke the following morning as rays of light filtered in through the windows of the house. On the bed lay a set of clothes and a note. Unfortunately, in his busy schedule of adventuring his father has never really bothered to teach him how to read.

Vire got dressed before heading outside into the lane; today it seemed much friendlier than it had just the afternoon before. Birds chirped merrily in the sunlight and a pair of butterflies flapped around the small garden outside the front of the house. Vire sat on the front of the stairs into the house for some time taking in the sights and sounds and wondering where Tuyena must have gone, but his question was soon answered as he saw her turn the bend onto the lane some few minutes later.

When Tuyena was within earshot she shooed Vire inside, following behind him Tuyena shut the door.
“Didn’t you read my note sweetheart? I said I was out looking for your father and not to go outside in case anyone else with those terrible people from yesterday were still around” Tuyena spoke with concern on her face.

“Oh! Umm...” Vire trailed off looking at his feet and kicking at the floor lightly. “Umm, my father never taught me to read” he finished.
Tuyena seemed taken aback at first but quickly responded “Well we’ll have to teach you then, won’t we? Now about your father darling, unfortunately it seems like you weren’t the only one who went missing yesterday. From what I could gather your father simply vanished right around the same time as yourself. I’m afraid he’ll be gone for quite some time love.”

Tuyena knelt down beside Vire and embraced him lightly. “Some members of the community offered to take you in until his return” Tuyena continued her eyes watering slightly “But I thought I’d give you the choice, I’d very much like to adopt you if you’d have me Vire” said Tuyena.

Vire didn’t know how to respond; eventually he hugged Tuyena tight and began to cry. Tuyena seemed to understand, and wrapped a hand around the back of Vire’s head; they sat like this for a long time.
The next few years were best in Vire’s life, Tuyena was every bit the mother he never had. Tuyena taught him to read and write, perform mathematics, and above everything else to value the power of logic. If Vire had but one complaint it was that he was rarely allowed outside. The fiery blade had a nasty habit of reforming every time he grew particularly sad, scared or angry. Still, Tuyena worked with him constantly to help his further control it.

Tuyena provided cheap potions to the people of Sandpoint and the income allowed the two to live comfortably in their house and for Tuyena to continue both her search for Vire’s family, and to research more about who was behind the event that befell Vire and why it happened. Information was slow going however as too much inquiry into missing persons and the occult would sooner or later draw the attention of the inquisitors, something that had to be avoided at all costs.

By the time Vire had turned fifteen he had an exacting control of the blade of fire he was able to manifest and found he could even change its shape and create multiples of them. Tuyena was perplexed by the strange blades, but pleased at her son’s newfound control over them, they had come so far.

In a few more short years Vire would finally come of age, and much like his father before him; he yearned for a life of adventure. With a tearful goodbye to his mother, he set off into the world to make his own path, with a promise to her that he’d return unscathed.

Vire’s travels over the next two years were remarkably enjoyable to him, especially as he had been deprived of the outside world for so long. Still, while he had seen a share of combat, he’d yet to emulate the great and glorious kills of his father.

Still, he had been traveling for quite some time, and homesickness had begun to set in. Perhaps it was time to return to Sandpoint and reunite with Tuyena for a few months before setting back off to the life of adventure.