Alreigchsdottir (Patreon)

"Lykopis, the Mad Queen of Rende

How does one describe madness?  Can it be quantified?  Is it actions taken in defiance of logic, or simply the lack of it?  In the many realms, in all the lands that are Talamh, there is no shortage of those many would call 'mad'.  Insane, senseless, unthinking, or just plain old angry.

But there is only one famed for her supposed 'madness'.  Her savagery is the stuff of tavern whispers; her brutality to her enemies enough to cowe even barbarian tribes from the Wilder lands; her ferocity to rival that of even elder beasts that have roamed Talamh since its birth.  Born of bloodshed, prophecy, and horrors, a woman who had no place in the world.  A half-blood of Divine lineage and Orcish legacy.  She who carved out a place for herself from the most inhospitable lands known to all.

This place is known, quite poetically, as Rende.  It is a savage kingdom in which to live, but not nearly as monstrous or barbaric as many would assume.  Yes, it is a predominantly Orc-dominated nation, but it is more than roving bands following a war-leader.  Orcs of all breeds live together alongside one another, putting aside tribes in pursuit of a new Age for their kind.  It is expansion, progression, and change.  Humans, Elves, Wilderfolk; there is no race barred from entry or the ability to reinvent their lives.  Here a common man might become a general and a noble find simplicity and calm in simple workings with her hands.  

Rende: the Kingdom of the Wolf, and the Mad Queen who reigns over it all.  But I'll get to all of that later.  For now, I tell you the tale of the Alreigchsdottir.

For any unfamiliar with the tale of Lykopis, First among her siblings as a daughter of Myev the Manbane, it is not one meant for pleasant campfire retellings.  To recant them all might require more than a single sitting, but I will do what I can.  

To begin, we must of course start at the beginning.  Many can claim to have hard lives, but there are few that can say their trials come close to those she experienced from childhood.  Born into a tribe of Mountain Orcs, the God-Child of the Manbane and the All-Conquerer, she was, as many children of her kind are until their Proving, known then as just 'Whelp'.  

She was a bastard, a true bastard of Alreigch so say the stories, raised among her savage, warmongering people as little more than a Half-Blood cast off.  Her fellow children would not play-wrestle with her; she was warned to be an aberration, an unnatural Witch-Child, and yet also inferior to her own people.  Even so, there were not those who did not show her kindness, or at least, what passes as kindness for Or'Khan's descendants.

Without parents to raise her or give her a place to begin, the task instead fell to the Tribe Shaman.  He was one of the few who spoke of the dire prophecies surrounding the birth of a child that would set all the wolves of the world to howl as one.  Herald of the Dread-Wolf.  Daughter of Destruction.  Or'Khan, returned.  There were a lot of stories already being told about her, even amongst her many half-siblings, all of which were by their own well-known triumphs and victories.  Of the dozen or so children of Myev Manbane however, Lykopis was named 'First'.  I suppose you'll understand soon if you've the time to read all my ramblings.

Naturally, the Shaman who must uphold all traditions, culture, lore, and omens for his people, took this with much wariness.  He knew raising her on her own legend would result only in the often monstrous tales wrought by her savage mother and fellow demigod children; children told from birth they were to be warlords, and who sought out such destinies no matter the evils or brutalities they must incur along the way.  So instead, he found a better way.

He treated her as a Child.  Shocker, right?  Just a kid, all right an Orc kid, who was a little different, a little odder, but still just the same as her distant kin.  Specialness would come later.

There are none who can know of just how many years the Shaman raised then Whelp-Lykopis, although dating back some timelines, I can make fair and safe assumptions.  It is dated that, 21 years ago, as of the Wednesday after tomorrow, then 5 year old Lykopis' tribe, its name since erased from history, was attacked by the forces of Malig.  This is by itself no 'one of a kind' event; to count the travesties and terrors caused by that  dark man amongst the various peoples of Talamh would take far too long.  

Safe to say, her people, tribe, were wiped out in their entirety.  Only some survivors were able to escape, including the wounded Shaman and traumatized little Lykopis.  With nowhere to go but to run, the two were pursued by Malig's trackers, plunging deeper and deeper into the Wilder lands, until they came to a place where no living soul dared to go.  There's even a little poem about it.

'Go not walking in the Wight Woods,

That place of darkest thought.

For to risk awaking the Sleeper,

Even all the Gods dare not.'

I know.  Not the best poem, but the fact that that's its there should say something.

It is a land of perpetual winter, a place of the unnatural coldm a forest realm of unending silence and malevolent, hungering eyes.  Death has a lair in Talamh, and it is in the Wight Woods. 

To this lifeless place were the desperate Orc and child-ward pushed to enter.  Malig's servants lingered at the border but even they were too afraid to cross the line of snow, out of place amidst the vast expanse of desert, steppes, and mountains that is the Wilder Lands.  They knew that their task to kill all the survivors would be accomplished regardless.

Lost amidst the frozen black pines and never-ending silence, Shaman and Whelp struggled for survival more than they had ever thought possible.  Fires do not burn in the Wight Woods unless they are magical in nature, and even those flickering and sputtering as if about to go out.  Nothing grows in the Wight Woods, nothing lives at all, but there are still the beings who dwell there.

To give you but a sense of the horrors my beloved Lykopis faced, I will delve into but briefly.  Before she had learned much more than the haft of an axe forced into her hand as soon as she could grip it, Lykopis did battle alongside her protector against horrors and terrors the world dare not ponder.  

They are the things seen in the corner of your eye, the eyes that watch, the chill that stalks, the feeling of dread and cold that overtakes one when they realize they are not alone.  As the hairs rise on the nape of your neck, you feel them grow closer.  Some can even speak, mimicking the voices of those they ripped from living throats, ready to trick, eager to feed.   They come in many varying forms, somehow hundreds of species so murderous as to deplete entire kingdoms of life forced to coexist in a land where hunger is neverending, and yet death does not claim the ones who suffer.

Even Lykopis has no idea how long she was in there. I do not attempt to over-ponder the reason why she still sits bolt upright in our bed, breathing misty breath when winter is not yet even here, and panting like an animal having escaped a hungry predator.  I can but hold her close, warm her chilled limbs, and promise her she will never again return to that awful place.  

She has told me the tale but once, of how her guardian, the Shaman whose name she could never pronounce but knew only as "Ger", finally succumbed.  It was not the multitude of wounds he suffered from the horrors they were stalked by daily, things undying that rose from even the deadliest of blows, but the curse that haunts each and every flake of snow, nettle, and rock that is that nightmare forest.

There is no life in the Wight Wood, which means there is nothing edible. Alongside the biting cold, howling winds, and terrors lurking around every corner.  All one can think of is their hunger, their roiling, stabbing pain in their stomachs, of starving to death but unable to die.  Driven mad, until all one can think of, all one can do, is eat something.  

Ger had done his best, giving his supplies to Lykopis to make sure she survived, his self-composure and magic barely able to manage the same.  All wells run dry in the end.  Even with the knowledge of that he should not, he finally succumbed to his hunger and ate of the flesh of one of his foes.  He became a Wight.

The transformation from life to unlife is not a pleasant one I imagine.  Artistically, I might describe it as feeling your body dying bit by bit, rotting before your eyes, and a desire for warmth, for life, so overpowering that you seek it out in the blood and flesh of even those you might have once called kin.  I've no idea if that's true or not, but the truth of the matter is, to become a Wight is a fate literally worse than death.  

Ger knew he would soon turn into a monster, knew that he eventually would succumb and become one of them.  Even worse, he knew that he would have failed in his charge to protect her.  More than just as a legacy, Ger loved Lykopis, in that special way that each and every person seems to always do when able to be around her. As a member of a species that normally do not truly acknowledge familial bonds, she was truly his daughter.  So, he did the only thing he could to protect her from himself.

He asked Lykopis to kill him.  I will not share the words that she spoke to me in private, but know that it is not a fate I would wish on anyone, a pain no child should have to face.

And still, she survived.  Now alone, for a month, as a child.  In a place where even the strongest could not survive, a child raced from tree to tree, evading creatures that are more formed of shadow than actual light.  Her nightmares are worse than any others, even mine, that I've ever seen.  

There is a dawn to such a twilight of a beginning, of course.  For one day, all at once, she was suddenly away from that awful place.  

Her rescuer, a large grandfather of a wandering warrior, praised her for her survival.  He offered to take her somewhere far away, someplace safe where a child could grow happy, spared of the harms of the world.  He offered to take her to Russland, that magical land of heroes, legends, and forever bliss.

But Lykopis, a child then who already had gone through what ten grown men together might not have survived, refused.  She would no longer be the frightened, scared little girl.  From there she would travel with this man, be trained by a Master who took no apprentices.  A tired old campaigner by the name of Rathlos Snowmane.

Even now she follows his wise teachings, using them to balance her own stubbornness and temper, so that they do not rule her.  Many years later, she would set off on the path that would lead her to become a warrior all on her own; the greatest warrior I've ever seen; the most beautiful woman in the world; the love of my life, from here to the End.

And at last, we come to the strange title which we discuss today, first and foremost today; in and of itself many names and tales all in one.  Alreigchsdottir.  God-Daughter of the All Conquerer.  Born of the Wight Wood, trained by Rathlos Dragonscar, St. Snowmane, Old Man Mourning himself.  And Old Man Mourning is, as you all know, the name of the former Alreigch."

~Oborro Othello