Part 2: Prologue: The Marking

The Journal of Jeremiah Liro


Prologue - The Marking

5 Sembten 1218



A branch snapped under my feet. I took my eyes off of the sun, blinking away the afterimages. The sun had passed the zenith and was heading for the Tanoroth mountain range looming not far to the west. I added another item to my growing list of errors. I hadn't considered that it would get darker earlier on this side of the mountains.



I peered uselessly at the old map I'd bought before I left. I was somewhere in the middle of the damn woods, somewhere east of the mountains that separated Idfrennia and Ferol, and somewhere west of the river. It was stupid of me to try and go cross-country to 'save some time' after the road became impassable by horse. If I had at least tried to follow the road to Verdistis... well, at least I wouldn't be lost.

Stupid! If I hadn't been so paranoid about being late I would have stuck to the road.

I heard a noise and turned.




A damned orc!




I barely managed to get my father's old sword up to parry the blow, but it didn't do much good anyway. The force of the impact rang my arm like a bell, and sent the sword spinning from my nerveless fingers.

I retreated hastily, but backed into a tree. The orc regrouped and charged. It'd been too long since I'd used magic. There was only one thing I recalled at the moment.

I focused and mumbled the only spell that came to mind. The orc and I instantly changed positions, and the orc suddenly found itself much closer to the tree than it thought it was; his own momentum slammed him face-first into it.

I picked up my fallen sword with my left hand, the one that wasn't still stinging. I knelt over the stunned orc. I saw the fear in its eyes. It saw the anger in my own. I clumsily sawed open its throat with the sword. Orcs never asked for any mercy, and the bastards didn't deserve any.

The blood sprayed all over me.

Blast it all. That dungheap's stinking blood got all over my armor.

I spat on the corpse in disgust.

I didn't want to pause any longer, but I doubted that anyone I might come across would be keen to let a blood-covered maniac into their home, and if I didn't clean it off right away, it never would come off.

Let's see, there was a stream not too far back.

I took off my armor right then and there. I didn't want that orc filth coming anywhere near my skin. Besides, there wasn't anyone around to see anyway.





An arrow smashed into a tree, inches from my head!




That trick I pulled wasn't going to work on three of them, and I certainly wasn't going to try magic with all the rust in my brain!

I could either put my armor on, or run, but not both at the same time. I dropped the armor.




Beautiful. Now I'm lost, being chased by orcs, AND clad in naught but my breeches, this is just bloody wonderful!




They say to never look back, and for good reason. A hidden hole or root and you fall on your face. But I turned to look back anyway. They were gaining on me. I willed my legs to run faster, but it wasn't enough.




An arrow clipped my leg. As I crashed heavily into the ground, I saw something small and white go flying into the underbrush, along with my sword.

Even through the pain, I felt an odd chill spreading from my wound...

Poison... the bloody arrow was poisoned... so much for alleged 'honor' of orcs. Damn...




The bastards weren't going to wait for the poison to do its work. The orc stood over me with satisfaction, not in any hurry to kill me. No, I suspected I was going to die very slowly.

I didn't want to die, but I seemed to be out of options, except for prayer. May as well...

"To any of the Seven who may be listening, I beseech you - not on my behalf, but for my sister Jenna. Please, save and protect her," I said.




I saw a light in the sky, bigger, brighter than the sun. I thought it was the bright light you see when your soul passes from this world. Then I realized that the orc was staring at it too. It was coming straight towa-



Next Time: Found and Lost




Behind the Scenes:

The introduction video has some good direction and animated gif fodder, but the problem was that it featured the male warrior character (Lucien in Beyond Divinity canon), and it just wasn't going to work with my mage character. Here it is if you want to see it now, but if you want to figure out the mystery of what happened along with the main character (I chose the name Jeremiah Liro), then uh... don't.

The introduction movie is literally the entire amount of main plot you get until the player reaches about level 10, and there isn't even any dialogue in it, so the game does kinda start slow.

Introduction Movie


I included a map to help readers figure out where Jeremiah was. Basically in the area underneath "Rivellon", bounded by mountains and the river.


What's fake in this update?

•  Basically, everything. This update consists of a trimmed down version of the game's introduction movie. 
•  There is no date given for the start of the game, but my date was based upon information found later. 
•  The opening shot of Jeremiah in the forest was real, but taken later, and Jeremiah's hair was photoshopped brown. 
•  The map is taken from a map you get later, and I made it look faded in Photoshop. 
•  I had to write an excuse for Jeremiah to remove his armor so I could use shots from the intro. This also meant that I had to write in Jeremiah's hair changing colour from brown to silver.

I would have picked non-"old dude" hair if I had the option. I could have entirely cut out the scenes from the intro with brown hair, but I wanted to keep at least some of it, because it made for good animated gifs, and inventing a magical hair colour change was a lot less work than photoshopping a few hundred images. 


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