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mc776Something I'd been thinking about on my way home while trying to figure out how the mechanics of the RPG I've been working on would apply to an actual work...
A man travels far across the world, making a fortune in battle and plunder, driven by a desire to confront and slay the man who murdered his father when he was a child. His ship is caught in a storm, and the man is left half-dead on the shore of a distant and unknown land, penniless and alone.
He is rescued by a young couple, a fisherman and his wife, who take him into their home as a guest, where he stays for many years. The couple are all but penniless themselves, and live off the land in a small hut with the man's father, a kindly old veteran who himself had been marooned here years ago over some long-forgotten personal dispute. The only other settlement nearby is a tiny village a mile down the coast, inhabited by people little better off than themselves. There is no way to contact the man's home, or whatever remains of his fleet - and his fortune.
Under the care and instruction of the couple, aided by the advice of the father who has become fast friends with the man, he learns to work the land in this unknown country, and to fish, and establish himself through honest work for the first time in years. He lives a comfortable life, but still deep in his heart he yearns to fulfill his childhood mission, and avenge the death of his father.
He has also fallen in love with the fisherman's wife, but that is a relatively minor concern.
Seven years pass. The man and the father speak much, and through the older man's tales of his many exploits he begins to piece together a coherent image of his past life. This past life includes, among other things, the murder of his father. The man does not reveal this, and to himself he declares his quest for vengeance over.
The man passes his life happily on the island with his newfound friends, when in the eighth year he has a dream: he is disembodied, seeing only his father's dying, bloody body, his life fading away before his eyes. His father struggles to get one final word out; the man awakes in a cold sweat before he could hear it.
The dream returns every so often, then at least once every week, then twice, ... eventually it haunts him every night, every time exactly four hours before dawn. The mask he has now taken to wear around his father's killer and his family ever so slowly begins to crumble at the edges, and the ravages of many sleepless nights have encroached on his features.
Today the couple's child is born, on the tenth anniversary of his landing - and the twentieth since the man began his quest. He takes a walk through the field after fetching a midwife from the village. He finds a scythe someone had left by mistake.
He looks back at the house.
A man travels far across the world, making a fortune in battle and plunder, driven by a desire to confront and slay the man who murdered his father when he was a child. His ship is caught in a storm, and the man is left half-dead on the shore of a distant and unknown land, penniless and alone.
He is rescued by a young couple, a fisherman and his wife, who take him into their home as a guest, where he stays for many years. The couple are all but penniless themselves, and live off the land in a small hut with the man's father, a kindly old veteran who himself had been marooned here years ago over some long-forgotten personal dispute. The only other settlement nearby is a tiny village a mile down the coast, inhabited by people little better off than themselves. There is no way to contact the man's home, or whatever remains of his fleet - and his fortune.
Under the care and instruction of the couple, aided by the advice of the father who has become fast friends with the man, he learns to work the land in this unknown country, and to fish, and establish himself through honest work for the first time in years. He lives a comfortable life, but still deep in his heart he yearns to fulfill his childhood mission, and avenge the death of his father.
He has also fallen in love with the fisherman's wife, but that is a relatively minor concern.
Seven years pass. The man and the father speak much, and through the older man's tales of his many exploits he begins to piece together a coherent image of his past life. This past life includes, among other things, the murder of his father. The man does not reveal this, and to himself he declares his quest for vengeance over.
The man passes his life happily on the island with his newfound friends, when in the eighth year he has a dream: he is disembodied, seeing only his father's dying, bloody body, his life fading away before his eyes. His father struggles to get one final word out; the man awakes in a cold sweat before he could hear it.
The dream returns every so often, then at least once every week, then twice, ... eventually it haunts him every night, every time exactly four hours before dawn. The mask he has now taken to wear around his father's killer and his family ever so slowly begins to crumble at the edges, and the ravages of many sleepless nights have encroached on his features.
Today the couple's child is born, on the tenth anniversary of his landing - and the twentieth since the man began his quest. He takes a walk through the field after fetching a midwife from the village. He finds a scythe someone had left by mistake.
He looks back at the house.