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[NobodyPro]

There once was an elven princess, Thirol I think. She was born into a life of warfare. Humans and Goblins coveted the land her people had owned since the dawn of time. From a young age she was taught the art of war and the dance of death, as was the duty of all elven princesses. When she came of age, she would lead the armies in defence of the forests. In her first defence she killed a troll in close-combat.

Years later her third-oldest daughter, let's call her Clai, was spirited away by a goblin kidnapper as she slept. Thirol vowed to find her daughter no matter the cost and laid siege to every tower she found. A year later, as she led her men through the dungeons to free the prisoners, she was reunited with her daughter.

Only for her to be snatched away from her mother after such a brief taste of freedom.

She never saw her mother again. Thirol was appointed Queen when the previous ruler was killed by a human raiding party, taking an arrow through the lower body and dying from her injuries. The power of her civilisation was waning and the immortal armies of the elves had been reduced to mere sentinels by the horrors of war. There was no way to find her daughter without losing her civilisation.

And so we move on to the story of Clai, the girl who had only tasted freedom at a young age and was subjected to the dungeons of the goblin towers not once but twice. She was easily turned by the goblins and found her place among the snatchers. She had a quick temper and often killed others because of the slightest insult. Mostly just human converts anyway. This tendency for murder and her proficiency at child snatching earned her many names of the years.

Once, as she gathered with the other snatchers outside the tower, preparing to embark on another daring kidnapping they were charged by a snarling creature, it resembled a man with a bull's head. Clai didn't stand a chance, it was on them before she could pull her axe from it's loop. It swung it's longsword high and cut deep into her left arm, severing it at the shoulder and leaving her to bleed out as her fellow snatchers drove it back into the wilds with whip, spear and bolt.

More than a century passed before the Minotaur came face-to-face with Thirol. She was now the slayer of many a man that would besiege the forest retreat her people called home. Her daughters all dead from their duties as princesses, her sons dead from foolish notions of adventure. Her husband killed in the night, his body sucked clean of blood.

The Minotaur saw the resemblance instantly, the relation unmistakable. It hefted it's longsword high and boasted loudly of it's kill. Describing it in vivid detail even as Thirol readied her ornate, wooden spear, sharpened to a supernatural edge by master craftsmen, and adjusted her beautiful oaken helmet, it's carvings giving it the the horns of a stag and the appearance of animal fur.

The fight was long and neither combatant managed to land a blow before the Minotaur was caught off balance and his hand was crushed by an expert blow from the butt of Thirol's spear. As it fell to the ground she whipped the spear around and drove it through the Minotaur's right eye before he could even fall to the ground.

On the Minotaur's unmoving chest, amongst it's trophies, she spied a maple amulet. The amulet she had given Clai. She knelt beside the beast's corpse and wept for the dead.
Thirol later ate the Minotaur's body and served as Queen for many more years before a massive human army wiped out what remained of her civilisation. At the last battle twenty humans died for every elf and Thirol herself managed to permanently cripple the enemy general before being shot and killed by a conscripted fisherman. Such is the fate of heroes in a realistic world.

This story is loosely based on a world I just genned. If nothing else it shows that legends has the potential to provide the basis of a good (or at least fun to write) story. 

[Powder Miner]

Make a story of the fiiissheermaaaaaaaaan!

[NobodyPro]

Galka sat by the river, trailing a hooked and baited string in the water. His mind was only half on the task however. He worried about his son, Marat. Tomorrow he would be a man. He would be old enough to wed, old enough to take a trade, old enough to make his own way.

But how long will it be before he is forced into the army as his father had been. Made to fight in some forsaken landscape in a far off kingdom.

Galka could still remember the war. The genocidal hunting of the Elves, fueled by their lord's disgust at the Elves' tradition of eating the dead. The long march through endless, ancient conifers. Waking some mornings to find men killed, their bodies hanging from the trees. Yet they still pushed into the heart of the forest. Where the last forest retreat of the southern elves stood.

The elves didn't fight as humans did. Even as the great army split to form a ring around the retreat arrows began to fly from the shadows. Three men in front of Galka fell before they even began to close-in. Galka and the other crossbowmen advanced behind the infantry, waiting for the enemy ranks to appear. They never did. Just shadows that ran between the trees, to fast to aim at. Any quarrels they loosed struck only trees and dirt.

As the noose began to tighten the elves began to fall. Some stood to meet the advancing ranks, wooden swords or spears held ready. The ancient veterans fell only because of the sheer number of men that came at them. Other elves were caught by the hail of quarrels shot from the rear ranks as they retreated.

The trees suddenly pressed closely together and arrows began to fly from the branches above. The dense trees forced the men to walk three abreast, straight into the strange, wooden blades that waited for them. The fighting was brutal but the elves were not invincible, the man beside him sent a quarrel through the leg of the elf preventing them from advancing on the heart. As they entered the clearing they saw that other parts of the ring had already entered the heart, fighting the last of the elves back to the centre.

It was then he saw Lord Udma, the king's general, on the ground, grasping his bleeding leg. He loaded his crossbow as an elf, in ornately carved wooden armour and a stag-horned helmet, drove her spear through his left knee, somehow cutting off his lower leg with the spearhead. As it lifted it's spear to deliver the killing blow as Galka loosed his quarrel. The bronze tip punched through the center of it's breastplate. It staggered and then knelt looking down in shock. It removed it's helmet slowly, hands shaking, to reveal the ageless face of an elven woman. She placed the helmet beside her, heedless of the battle raging around her, and craned her neck back to look at the sky.

The fighting was amost over, men still entered the clearing from the trees and Galka could only watch as Lord Udma ordered two men to lie the woman's body down. Proof of their victory.