Janet's Story

Far to the northern lands, where the vast pine forests meet the ancient rounded mountaintops of the land touch the clear blue sky, live a tribe of outlanders who follow the great migrations of the elk and bison all throughout the year. These nomads who wander the great pine forests and mountain expanses call themselves the Moralltach and live a life of sustanance and union with nature where spiritualism and necessity led them to a lifestyle that is intimately intertwined with nature. In their culture, they believe that when a child is conceived, an animal spirit enters the mother's womb and takes hold within the pliable flesh being molded within the mother's womb. They also believe that, when the child is born, it is possible to tell the nature of the spirit which nests within the child by virtue of the infant's physical characteristics and attitude. As such, when a child was born to them with fire red hair, eyes, and an joyous attitude to all around her, the Moralltach celebrated for it was thought that the child was inhabited by none other than the great Phoenix.

The truth of the matter was, however, that the girl's great grandparents had been druids of the north who once set a captured Phoenix free from an evil mage's captivity where the bird would be drained of its magic until it died and was reborn as a young phoenix only for the process to start all over again in a neverending cycle of death and rebirth. As thanks for having set it free, the Phoenix thus touched the humans and imbued a part of its magic onto them. This trait has remained in their bloodline ever since and every few generations a new individual is born inside which the Phoenix's eternal flames dwell.

In any case, for seven days and nights the nomads of the north celebrated the joyous birth and believed that it marked a time of abundance and clemency for their people much as the legendary bird was believed to be an creature of great good and honor. However,  the people's joy was to be short lived as their celebration had attracted the unwanted attention of a Green Hag whose noxious gaze fell upon the young girl with horrible greed and wickedness. For though the girl was no legendary bird herself, the flames that burned inside her could nonetheless be extracted and used to fuel a great many spells that the Hag could concoct to make her life last a great deal longer than it should.

And so, watching on from the forest's edge, the Hag could feel the wild magic that dwelled within the child and new she desired it for her own. And so during the night of the last day of the celebration, when the people of the clan where tired and distracted from the numerous days of celebrating, the Hag used her wicked magic to disguise herself as a comely young girl of the tribe and stole the precious girl away from her people and took her away into the woods. The next morning, when the people of the clan looked for the child in her crib only to find her gone, they searched the woods all around for any trace of where she might have gone but could find not a trace.
And so, the Hag brought the red child to her twisted abode. There, she planed to carve the child up and rip the magic right out of her blood with her great twisted dagger. Crooning and gloating of her great find, the Hag cackled to herself gleefully as she congradulated herself on the success of her scheme and spoke to herself at length what she had done and what she would do. But, lost as she was in her self-flattering monologue, the Hag failed to notice a trio of hidden pixies who came into the Hag's domain and stole the child away to avenge themselves for the awfull way in which the Hag treated the forest and her neighbors. Away the pixies fled even further into the woods and into the feywilds where the Hag could not follow easily.

For years the girl grew up in the strange and magical land of the fairies, her experiences enchanted by the strange world she inhabited as she was traded back and forth from the seelie and unseelie courts for the novel distraction that she was. For not only was she a human in a strange land almost devoid of them but she was one touched by the great flames of the Poenix. This fact, and her novel and the strange magic that burned within her, protected the child from the otherwise cruel and mischevious nature of the fairies of that world. And though she had many friends in Fairie and many fond memories, she also knew that she did not belong for no other humans existed there. When the child named Janet reached adulthood, the girl decided to travel back to the material realm with the help of her fairy friends to search for her people and seek out the place she came from and perhaps find answers as to where the strange power from within her comes from. It is this wandering in search for answers has led her to the Western Marches.

But though she is now grown, the child of the north should beware for the Hag who once stole her away from her parents still stalks the woods and her desire for the flames that dwell within the girl are now stronger than ever in her ever advancing age.