The orphaned egg
Sept 10, 2022 10:00:01 GMT
Grimes, Ser Baine Cinderwood 🔥🌼, and 4 more like this
Post by Egg on Sept 10, 2022 10:00:01 GMT
The egg turns up at the Refuge not long after the Battle of the Sundered Chains.
It's Nem who first notices. The room next to the one she shares with Val, which was previously empty, is being visited from time to time by members of staff. One time, as one of them goes in, she catches a glimpse through the open door of a collection of bolsters and blankets arranged on the bed, and nestled in the middle of them a smooth, almost-spherical object bigger than her head.
After a couple of days of excited speculation among the children, Mr Allenby gathers them all in the newly-busy bedroom and tells them that this is another child who is going to be living here. Some of the younger children are doubtful about the claim that this large smooth rock is a child but Mr Allenby explains that this child has not been born yet, but is inside this egg getting ready to come out.
Many of the children become even more interested in the egg after this and lobby insistently to be allowed to interact with it. After initially refusing, the staff soon relent, saying things to each other in weary voices like 'good to develop positive relationships' and 'welcoming environment when it hatches' and 'probably less work than trying to stop them'. So over the following few tendays, always closely supervised, the egg becomes part of the children's daily activities. Rilla and Nym are allowed to play in the room and talk to the egg, and often give it the role of 'baby' in their games, which it alway seems to perform very satisfactorily. The more complex games of Sorcha, Selkie, Turnus, and Miriam, normally take place elsewhere, but quite often end with the four of them piling breathlessly into the egg's room and declaring that they, the Copper Band, have vanquished many foes to rescue it from some captivity or peril. Bren mostly leaves the egg alone except for one day when he asks to see it and then, once in the room, is only narrowly prevented from kicking it. He will not explain why but he does later tearfully apologize to Mr Allenby. Meanwhile Lareni's requests to take the egg to lessons with him so it can be 'edgycatied' are refused, but as a compromise he is allowed to go to the egg's room after school and tell it everything he's learned that day. Even Val sometimes visits the egg, sitting silently next to it and running her fingertips very carefully across its shell.
If the staff had any plans to give the hatchling a name, they are entirely thwarted. By the time the shell begins to crack, it is abundantly clear that the children have already named their playmate and will not accept any alternative. And so the scraggy grey bundle of bones, feathers, and beak that pushes its way into the light on a summer's day in the Year of the Palls Purple is: Egg.
From the other children’s perspective it does not, at first, make very much difference that Egg is no longer an egg. They still visit to play or talk, or they don’t. They’re curious about Egg’s new shape and the fact that he now moves around a bit, but his new full-time aarakocra nurse mostly forbids them from touching him and he can’t really do anything so for the most part they treat him the same as before. Indeed some of them rather lose interest when Flis the cat comes to live at the Refuge and turns out to be a more interactive (though also slightly more hazardous) playmate. But Egg very quickly gets bigger, fluffier, and more rewarding to visit. After a few months he can walk and hop around, hold things in his little talons, chirp and babble and even say a few words of common, elvish, and dwarvish. He forms a particular attachment to the new arrival Silhouette (or ‘Sil’, as the other children call them) and likes to snuggle into their fur. He also likes to hear Elodan singing and often joins in with melodious (though not always in-key) peeps and warbles.
By Midwinter Egg can speak complete sentences, join in with games (without necessarily understanding them), and fly. This last point is a source of some stress for the staff of the Refuge. They have of course had flying children in their care before: the four elemental children who have by this time left to live in New Hillborrow with Miss Montajay. But they were old enough to be reasoned with, and significantly bigger and easier to hold onto if necessary. Nonetheless, adaptations are made, new procedures are developed, stern warnings are given, and things settle down soon enough.
A year rolls around since Egg hatched and he’s now almost like a peer to Rilla and Nym. He moves out of the self-contained bedroom into the dormitory with the other young children. He also starts going to lessons at Red’s School (which, as it happens, is also about a year old) and gets to know a whole new group of children there; and on the occasional Refuge outings to visit New Hillborrow, which Egg is now allowed to join, he gets to know Miriam, Selkie, Turnus, and Sorcha, who remember him from before though he doesn’t remember them. They can do lots of magical things and they tell him lots of stories about their adventures and victories (which are really a mixture of summaries of their make-believe games and imaginative reworkings of their activities with the Flower Dragon Scouts). His own games and stories start to include similar (though less coherent) feats of heroism.
The aarakocra chick also becomes aware of some interesting grown-ups who seem to have something to do with the Refuge. There’s a serious-looking pink man with yellow hair who comes to talk to Mr Allenby sometimes and walks around looking at things, and sometimes a big green man with black hair comes with him and tries to make him laugh. Egg learns that these are Sir Varis and Sir Baine, also called the Crinsum Fists, and they’re adventurers like the Copper Band only their adventures are bigger and more famous and Sir Varis even killed a god, which sounds bad but it was a bad god so it’s good. Sometimes Egg also sees a pretty light-brown lady with yellow hair called Merla who’s an actual fairy queen like in stories, and another frowning pink man – this one has grey hair and is Sergeant Grimes who’s an important person in the Town Watch, which is people who keep everyone safe and stop people doing bad things, and he goes on adventures too sometimes. In fact it turns out that even Miss Montajay and Miss BB from Scouts are adventurers sometimes. Being an adventurer means you help people by fighting monsters and bad people.
Over the following months Egg noticeably outgrows Nym and Rilla (in both size and maturity) and spends more time with Lareni and Luca, but his fascination with the adult adventurers continues. He tries to talk to them whenever they visit the Refuge or the School, or whenever he goes to New Hillborrow, and asks them endless questions about their exploits. Sir Baine lets him ride on his enormous soft dog Frankie, and Queen Merla ruffles his grey feathers and sings him a real fairy song. Sir Varis, though polite, remains a little aloof and formal, which only adds to his mystique. One day Egg learns that he plays dragonchess, and for the rest of the month the boy nags every single member of staff at the Refuge and the School until eventually Miss Crystalfist agrees to teach him how to play the game.
In the early spring, when Egg seems to be almost as ‘old’ as Bren, he goes missing one day. The panic doesn’t last long: Zunus Fernbrand of the Order of the Crimson Fist arrives at the Refuge the same evening with the little aarakocra on his shoulders, chirping happily. It turns out that someone let slip that the Crimson Fist compound is just a few minutes away up Tallow Street, and Egg decided to visit. He managed to convince several of the newer recruits that he had permission to be there and was having a grand time watching them train until the Master Archer spotted him, uncovered his deception with two well-chosen questions, and sent Zunus to take him back.
After the third or fourth time this happens, it’s agreed that Val will take Egg along with her to visit the Order once a tenday, on a non-school day, for no more than two hours. He of course takes full advantage of every visit and quickly becomes well known in the Order. Some members even begin to treat him as a sort of mascot. Varis draws the line when he finds out that Ildimiir has given Egg a Crimson Fist badge: this he makes the boy give back, explaining carefully that he hasn't done anything wrong but these are for members of the Order who have sworn solemn oaths and he shouldn't have been given it in the first place. Egg of course immediately volunteers to swear any sollen oafs that the Grandmaster wants, and also begs to be allowed to at least keep the red strip of cloth that Shiv gave him to use as a headband. The granting of the latter request is enough to distract from the former – for now.
Egg continues his studies and his visits to the Order. He learns about its history and rules and about how the horses and dogs are looked after and how the equipment is stored and maintained. He teaches some of the other children to play dragonchess so he can beat them at it (though Luca already knows it and refuses to play because it's boring, while Nem turns out to be a natural at it and wins most of the time). Conrad teaches Egg a little archery, which the boy seems to be quite good at. Grits teaches him to cook some of the Order's staple dishes, which he's less good at. Zunus teaches him some aerial manoeuvres, which takes a while as Egg they lack any common understanding of how to talk about flying and the innate magical flight of an aerotaur turns out to be rather different from flying with wings, but they have fun together and Egg does pick up some tricks and ideas.
In the warm late spring, when Egg is nearly two, Mr Allenby gathers all the children who live at the Refuge and explains that they're all going on a holiday together. The Dawnlands are going to become quite dangerous for a while because there are bad people searching for something here, so most people are going to go to live in other places until it's safe again. All the Refuge children, and some of the staff, are going to go to a place a long way away called Zot Goran. Mr Allenby can't say exactly how long it will be before everyone can come back, but it will probably feel like a long time.
Egg has heard a little about Zot Goran from Zunus and is excited to go there, though less so when he learns in the following days that Luca and Torgren and most of the other children from school are going to different places, and so are the Copper Band and the other Scouts. But what really changes his view is when he asks about the Order and learns that they're staying in Daring Heights to defend against the bad people. Instantly Egg is determined to do the same, and many arguments follow until eventually Sir Baine comes to the Refuge and has a private talk with the youngster. The thing is, the Master-at-Arms explains, if you're gonna fight with a team, you've got to make sure you're not gonna put them in danger. You're all counting on each other, and that's not just about being brave enough, it's about training and practicing together and stuff. If you go and fight without that, you're just making it harder for your team and they could get hurt. You can learn this stuff, like training with Ghost and Zunus, that's a start, but there's a lot more to learn and Egg, he explains, isn't ready yet. Not yet. And, being honest, maybe not ever with the Order because the bossman (this is what Sir Baine calls Sir Varis) has a rule about no kids from here joining up, so maybe it'll have to be some other team, but that's something to think about later. But for now, Egg's team is the Refuge and Mr Allenby's the boss of the team and Egg has to do what he says because his team's gonna need him in Zot Goran. This seems to convince Egg, at least enough to quiet his protests. And so he goes to Zot Goran.
The city is a revelation to Egg. The wind in the streets makes him feel like he's always flying even when he's on the ground. (He is warned emphatically not to fly unsupervised as the wind up in the sky is so much stronger than it ever is back home.) The music of the buildings is beautiful and endlessly fascinating in its constant changing harmonies. And there are so many aarakocra here! Not as many as minotaurs or aerotaurs but still a lot more than in Daring Heights. What's more, some of them are members of the Errant Guard.
The place where the Refuge children stay in Zot Goran is actually an establishment for orphans of the Errant Guard, which is how Egg learns about the organization of adventurer-soldiers. He meets some of them, many of whom have heard of the Order of the Crimson Fist and are very impressed (or pretend to be) when he tells them he's going to join one day. Mr Allenby agrees to let Egg do a little training with the Guard. An aarakocra named Miraaka takes charge of him, teaching him how to shoot accurately into and across the strong K'ul Goran winds and even how to shoot from the air. Egg is delighted and asks her many, many questions about adventuring and fighting and the Errant Guard and her life and exploits, most of which she answers with good humour.
In the end, the evacuation doesn’t last much longer than a month and the children are all back in Daring Heights well before Egg’s second birthday. On the walk from Portal Plaza to the Refuge they all notice the damage to buildings, the relative emptiness of the streets, the scorch-marks. But the Refuge and the School seem to have escaped the worst, and are already in the process of repair. It doesn’t take long for the children to settle back into their old routines.
After discussions with several aarakocra friends and associates, as well as the staff of the Refuge and the School, Mr Allenby decides that, at two years old, Egg is probably ready to go out into town on his own or with friends – but not during school hours, at meal-times, or after dark. These days his main friends are Bren, Ethane, Rushes, Golvoli, and Val – though Val is in some ways more like an elder sister. Egg’s games of heroism and adventure continue, increasingly mixed with real archery practice and visits to the Order compound. He also discovers Tabrud’s Yard, over beyond the Stone Road, between Iron Street and Daffles Street, where people gather to help each other with all kinds of things. Sometimes off-duty or retired soldiers, adventurers, or members of the Order help to train other townsfolk there to defend themselves and each other – someone tells Egg this has become more popular since the githyanki attacks. And there are often songs and stories and food.
It’s at Tabrud’s Yard that Egg discovers how adventurers know what adventures to go on. Apparently some of the taverns in town have notice-boards where people put up notices if they need help. This seems very unreasonable and unfair to Egg, who isn’t allowed in taverns. But it turns out that if you ask enough people, someone at the Yard can usually remember at least one of the latest notices. Which is how, around the autumn of the Year of the Desperate Gambit, Mr Allenby and the other Refuge staff begin to get a certain bundle of grey feathers asking for permission to go on an adventure…
(Many thanks to Toby (DM) and Lykksie for their input on this introduction and help with Egg's background, and to all the Worldbuilders for their comments on the character concept.)
It's Nem who first notices. The room next to the one she shares with Val, which was previously empty, is being visited from time to time by members of staff. One time, as one of them goes in, she catches a glimpse through the open door of a collection of bolsters and blankets arranged on the bed, and nestled in the middle of them a smooth, almost-spherical object bigger than her head.
After a couple of days of excited speculation among the children, Mr Allenby gathers them all in the newly-busy bedroom and tells them that this is another child who is going to be living here. Some of the younger children are doubtful about the claim that this large smooth rock is a child but Mr Allenby explains that this child has not been born yet, but is inside this egg getting ready to come out.
Many of the children become even more interested in the egg after this and lobby insistently to be allowed to interact with it. After initially refusing, the staff soon relent, saying things to each other in weary voices like 'good to develop positive relationships' and 'welcoming environment when it hatches' and 'probably less work than trying to stop them'. So over the following few tendays, always closely supervised, the egg becomes part of the children's daily activities. Rilla and Nym are allowed to play in the room and talk to the egg, and often give it the role of 'baby' in their games, which it alway seems to perform very satisfactorily. The more complex games of Sorcha, Selkie, Turnus, and Miriam, normally take place elsewhere, but quite often end with the four of them piling breathlessly into the egg's room and declaring that they, the Copper Band, have vanquished many foes to rescue it from some captivity or peril. Bren mostly leaves the egg alone except for one day when he asks to see it and then, once in the room, is only narrowly prevented from kicking it. He will not explain why but he does later tearfully apologize to Mr Allenby. Meanwhile Lareni's requests to take the egg to lessons with him so it can be 'edgycatied' are refused, but as a compromise he is allowed to go to the egg's room after school and tell it everything he's learned that day. Even Val sometimes visits the egg, sitting silently next to it and running her fingertips very carefully across its shell.
If the staff had any plans to give the hatchling a name, they are entirely thwarted. By the time the shell begins to crack, it is abundantly clear that the children have already named their playmate and will not accept any alternative. And so the scraggy grey bundle of bones, feathers, and beak that pushes its way into the light on a summer's day in the Year of the Palls Purple is: Egg.
From the other children’s perspective it does not, at first, make very much difference that Egg is no longer an egg. They still visit to play or talk, or they don’t. They’re curious about Egg’s new shape and the fact that he now moves around a bit, but his new full-time aarakocra nurse mostly forbids them from touching him and he can’t really do anything so for the most part they treat him the same as before. Indeed some of them rather lose interest when Flis the cat comes to live at the Refuge and turns out to be a more interactive (though also slightly more hazardous) playmate. But Egg very quickly gets bigger, fluffier, and more rewarding to visit. After a few months he can walk and hop around, hold things in his little talons, chirp and babble and even say a few words of common, elvish, and dwarvish. He forms a particular attachment to the new arrival Silhouette (or ‘Sil’, as the other children call them) and likes to snuggle into their fur. He also likes to hear Elodan singing and often joins in with melodious (though not always in-key) peeps and warbles.
By Midwinter Egg can speak complete sentences, join in with games (without necessarily understanding them), and fly. This last point is a source of some stress for the staff of the Refuge. They have of course had flying children in their care before: the four elemental children who have by this time left to live in New Hillborrow with Miss Montajay. But they were old enough to be reasoned with, and significantly bigger and easier to hold onto if necessary. Nonetheless, adaptations are made, new procedures are developed, stern warnings are given, and things settle down soon enough.
A year rolls around since Egg hatched and he’s now almost like a peer to Rilla and Nym. He moves out of the self-contained bedroom into the dormitory with the other young children. He also starts going to lessons at Red’s School (which, as it happens, is also about a year old) and gets to know a whole new group of children there; and on the occasional Refuge outings to visit New Hillborrow, which Egg is now allowed to join, he gets to know Miriam, Selkie, Turnus, and Sorcha, who remember him from before though he doesn’t remember them. They can do lots of magical things and they tell him lots of stories about their adventures and victories (which are really a mixture of summaries of their make-believe games and imaginative reworkings of their activities with the Flower Dragon Scouts). His own games and stories start to include similar (though less coherent) feats of heroism.
The aarakocra chick also becomes aware of some interesting grown-ups who seem to have something to do with the Refuge. There’s a serious-looking pink man with yellow hair who comes to talk to Mr Allenby sometimes and walks around looking at things, and sometimes a big green man with black hair comes with him and tries to make him laugh. Egg learns that these are Sir Varis and Sir Baine, also called the Crinsum Fists, and they’re adventurers like the Copper Band only their adventures are bigger and more famous and Sir Varis even killed a god, which sounds bad but it was a bad god so it’s good. Sometimes Egg also sees a pretty light-brown lady with yellow hair called Merla who’s an actual fairy queen like in stories, and another frowning pink man – this one has grey hair and is Sergeant Grimes who’s an important person in the Town Watch, which is people who keep everyone safe and stop people doing bad things, and he goes on adventures too sometimes. In fact it turns out that even Miss Montajay and Miss BB from Scouts are adventurers sometimes. Being an adventurer means you help people by fighting monsters and bad people.
Over the following months Egg noticeably outgrows Nym and Rilla (in both size and maturity) and spends more time with Lareni and Luca, but his fascination with the adult adventurers continues. He tries to talk to them whenever they visit the Refuge or the School, or whenever he goes to New Hillborrow, and asks them endless questions about their exploits. Sir Baine lets him ride on his enormous soft dog Frankie, and Queen Merla ruffles his grey feathers and sings him a real fairy song. Sir Varis, though polite, remains a little aloof and formal, which only adds to his mystique. One day Egg learns that he plays dragonchess, and for the rest of the month the boy nags every single member of staff at the Refuge and the School until eventually Miss Crystalfist agrees to teach him how to play the game.
In the early spring, when Egg seems to be almost as ‘old’ as Bren, he goes missing one day. The panic doesn’t last long: Zunus Fernbrand of the Order of the Crimson Fist arrives at the Refuge the same evening with the little aarakocra on his shoulders, chirping happily. It turns out that someone let slip that the Crimson Fist compound is just a few minutes away up Tallow Street, and Egg decided to visit. He managed to convince several of the newer recruits that he had permission to be there and was having a grand time watching them train until the Master Archer spotted him, uncovered his deception with two well-chosen questions, and sent Zunus to take him back.
After the third or fourth time this happens, it’s agreed that Val will take Egg along with her to visit the Order once a tenday, on a non-school day, for no more than two hours. He of course takes full advantage of every visit and quickly becomes well known in the Order. Some members even begin to treat him as a sort of mascot. Varis draws the line when he finds out that Ildimiir has given Egg a Crimson Fist badge: this he makes the boy give back, explaining carefully that he hasn't done anything wrong but these are for members of the Order who have sworn solemn oaths and he shouldn't have been given it in the first place. Egg of course immediately volunteers to swear any sollen oafs that the Grandmaster wants, and also begs to be allowed to at least keep the red strip of cloth that Shiv gave him to use as a headband. The granting of the latter request is enough to distract from the former – for now.
Egg continues his studies and his visits to the Order. He learns about its history and rules and about how the horses and dogs are looked after and how the equipment is stored and maintained. He teaches some of the other children to play dragonchess so he can beat them at it (though Luca already knows it and refuses to play because it's boring, while Nem turns out to be a natural at it and wins most of the time). Conrad teaches Egg a little archery, which the boy seems to be quite good at. Grits teaches him to cook some of the Order's staple dishes, which he's less good at. Zunus teaches him some aerial manoeuvres, which takes a while as Egg they lack any common understanding of how to talk about flying and the innate magical flight of an aerotaur turns out to be rather different from flying with wings, but they have fun together and Egg does pick up some tricks and ideas.
In the warm late spring, when Egg is nearly two, Mr Allenby gathers all the children who live at the Refuge and explains that they're all going on a holiday together. The Dawnlands are going to become quite dangerous for a while because there are bad people searching for something here, so most people are going to go to live in other places until it's safe again. All the Refuge children, and some of the staff, are going to go to a place a long way away called Zot Goran. Mr Allenby can't say exactly how long it will be before everyone can come back, but it will probably feel like a long time.
Egg has heard a little about Zot Goran from Zunus and is excited to go there, though less so when he learns in the following days that Luca and Torgren and most of the other children from school are going to different places, and so are the Copper Band and the other Scouts. But what really changes his view is when he asks about the Order and learns that they're staying in Daring Heights to defend against the bad people. Instantly Egg is determined to do the same, and many arguments follow until eventually Sir Baine comes to the Refuge and has a private talk with the youngster. The thing is, the Master-at-Arms explains, if you're gonna fight with a team, you've got to make sure you're not gonna put them in danger. You're all counting on each other, and that's not just about being brave enough, it's about training and practicing together and stuff. If you go and fight without that, you're just making it harder for your team and they could get hurt. You can learn this stuff, like training with Ghost and Zunus, that's a start, but there's a lot more to learn and Egg, he explains, isn't ready yet. Not yet. And, being honest, maybe not ever with the Order because the bossman (this is what Sir Baine calls Sir Varis) has a rule about no kids from here joining up, so maybe it'll have to be some other team, but that's something to think about later. But for now, Egg's team is the Refuge and Mr Allenby's the boss of the team and Egg has to do what he says because his team's gonna need him in Zot Goran. This seems to convince Egg, at least enough to quiet his protests. And so he goes to Zot Goran.
The city is a revelation to Egg. The wind in the streets makes him feel like he's always flying even when he's on the ground. (He is warned emphatically not to fly unsupervised as the wind up in the sky is so much stronger than it ever is back home.) The music of the buildings is beautiful and endlessly fascinating in its constant changing harmonies. And there are so many aarakocra here! Not as many as minotaurs or aerotaurs but still a lot more than in Daring Heights. What's more, some of them are members of the Errant Guard.
The place where the Refuge children stay in Zot Goran is actually an establishment for orphans of the Errant Guard, which is how Egg learns about the organization of adventurer-soldiers. He meets some of them, many of whom have heard of the Order of the Crimson Fist and are very impressed (or pretend to be) when he tells them he's going to join one day. Mr Allenby agrees to let Egg do a little training with the Guard. An aarakocra named Miraaka takes charge of him, teaching him how to shoot accurately into and across the strong K'ul Goran winds and even how to shoot from the air. Egg is delighted and asks her many, many questions about adventuring and fighting and the Errant Guard and her life and exploits, most of which she answers with good humour.
In the end, the evacuation doesn’t last much longer than a month and the children are all back in Daring Heights well before Egg’s second birthday. On the walk from Portal Plaza to the Refuge they all notice the damage to buildings, the relative emptiness of the streets, the scorch-marks. But the Refuge and the School seem to have escaped the worst, and are already in the process of repair. It doesn’t take long for the children to settle back into their old routines.
After discussions with several aarakocra friends and associates, as well as the staff of the Refuge and the School, Mr Allenby decides that, at two years old, Egg is probably ready to go out into town on his own or with friends – but not during school hours, at meal-times, or after dark. These days his main friends are Bren, Ethane, Rushes, Golvoli, and Val – though Val is in some ways more like an elder sister. Egg’s games of heroism and adventure continue, increasingly mixed with real archery practice and visits to the Order compound. He also discovers Tabrud’s Yard, over beyond the Stone Road, between Iron Street and Daffles Street, where people gather to help each other with all kinds of things. Sometimes off-duty or retired soldiers, adventurers, or members of the Order help to train other townsfolk there to defend themselves and each other – someone tells Egg this has become more popular since the githyanki attacks. And there are often songs and stories and food.
It’s at Tabrud’s Yard that Egg discovers how adventurers know what adventures to go on. Apparently some of the taverns in town have notice-boards where people put up notices if they need help. This seems very unreasonable and unfair to Egg, who isn’t allowed in taverns. But it turns out that if you ask enough people, someone at the Yard can usually remember at least one of the latest notices. Which is how, around the autumn of the Year of the Desperate Gambit, Mr Allenby and the other Refuge staff begin to get a certain bundle of grey feathers asking for permission to go on an adventure…
Egg in autumn / winter 1499 (2022).
Image assembled from art components by David Revoy for his Bird Avatar Generator, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
(Many thanks to Toby (DM) and Lykksie for their input on this introduction and help with Egg's background, and to all the Worldbuilders for their comments on the character concept.)