Vendar the Barbarian
Greatest among the barbarians, perhaps second only to
St. Almic, Vendar is regarded among the songs and poetry of the east as the idealized icon of the soul of Acrad. What follows is a paraphrase of his tale, much abbreviated from the original verse.
Vendar the barbarian was born the distant descendant of St. Almic, who went before all others in the East. Though many generations he was removed from the Shepherd-King, and many years yet until he would be the great barbarian dragonslayer, the infant was at once recognized for future glories.
In those days, the kingdom of giants had fallen into ruin and the people thereof scattered into petty realms and brigandry. So it came to be that fire giants in service to the line of Ygnas raided the pastures of Vendar's father. And while the warriors and servants hastened to drive off the giants and protect the flocks, his mother hid Vendar bundled in a sheepskin beside a hollowed tree. But it happened that one giant, far from the skirmish, had discovered the infant Vendar bundled in the sheepskin and hidden as he was and took the child. The giant, believing this bundle to be a lamb, bore the babe back to his master, Ertar the son of Ygnas, where it was at last discovered to be a human boy and not a lamb. The son of Ygnas planned to ransom the child to the humans, but in the meantime gave the child to his wife Agrid, who nursed the infant from her own breast. It was ever after held that Agrid had come to love Vendar as her own and sought to undermine her husband's plans for ransom of the boy for sheep. Indeed, Ertar's vision of annual payments of sheep were not to be, for the giants had angered the great fire wyrms of the Smoking Peaks. When the giants of the line of Ygnas came under attack by the dragon Baunedrath, Agrid fled with the young Vendar, but pursued by the enemy, she hid him in the wilderness intending to return.
So the boy lived in the wild for some time. When Vendar was at last discovered it was by the dwarves of Stonehome. He was grown now to youth and recognized only for his birth ring which the dwarves had presented to his parents and which he still wore. The dwarves feted him and guided him back to his people in a princely fashion.
During the latter years of his youth, Vendar's people came to quarrel with the East Karkothi and Dounocian people who were forced east by the Ost-Corsov expansion. In this period, Vendar came to be a chief among his people, and was thewy and taller than any other man, for he had as an infant a giant for a wetnurse. Vendar defeated the chieftains of the migrating East Karkothi and the Dounocians and united them into alliance with his people. Now, so great in glory and gold was Vendar that he ordered the construction of a castle and town for his people to dwell in and protect what they had won.
So it was that the very dragon who had once separated Vendar from the giantess, Baunedrath, came to covet the treasures and service of Vendar's people--for dragons had come to delight in the devotion of others. Yet Vendar was proud and unyielding. And, as certainly as everyone knows, when Baunedrath came to Vendargaard to plunder it, the wives of Vendar told the dragon that the king had taken all of his gold and hidden it in a cave behind a waterfall to the south. The dragon, stoked to anger by this, hurried to the waterfall the Vendar's wives had described. There, Vendar had prepared a smoking fire to convince the dragon that some great cave truly lay behind the curtain of rushing water. The dragon, consumed by pride and wrath, and seeking to catch the barbarian king by surprise, dove into the waterfall to crash into the cave. However, Vendar had tricked Baunedrath and there was no cave, and the dragon had in truth battered itself against the rock of the falls and was then, stunned, foundering in the churning water. Before Baunedrath could recover his poise, Vendar rolled a rock from the cliff to pin the dragon's wing and hurled himself after in short order, to finish the business with his sword. Though wounded, the dragon did not fall quickly and it was thanks again to his wetnurse that Vendar survived the dragon's flame for he had been rendered impervious to flame as a child by her breastmilk.
Vendar anointed himself to the gods in the dragon's blood, and his skin was made invulnerable as iron and he was indomitable to weapons borne against him. And great glories were those to which he lead his people until the end of his days.
The Doom of Vendar
Though he had risen to the heights of glory prophesied by the Fates and which the dwarves heard foretold in the songs of stone, Vendar's fate, and it was not a pleasant one, would meet him not long after this great triumph. Indeed, his death would come through treachery stoked by jealousy. Tradition holds that it is ill luck to tell of it in song, and the good bards of the east will only make oblique allusions in the epilogue of the work. To do otherwise in verse or oration is to invite upon oneself the Doom of Vendar, a dark curse that would make the offender suffer such a fate as Vendar.
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