:: Random NPC—Yale, Bórean Dendrite ::

Yale (“Fertile Upland”)

by Wm Jay Carter III, 6/25/15

a bórean

Race: Bórean

Age: Adult

Gender: Female

Stature: Short

Physical: Small Head

Outwardly: Paranoid

Inwardly: Desperate

Profession: Physician

Magic: Dendrite—Awakened

Animal: Lion “Caerwyn”

Catchphrase: “You there. Is the Winslie village up ahead? Tell me truths or I will know! Hurry, speak!”

As you leave the Winslie village toward the Dreaming Desert you see a strange sight; out on the horizon a silhouette wavers in the heat. You take it to be a lion, but struggle to understand why it has the upper body of a snouted creature, complete with two massive clawed hands, growing out of its neck. You shake your head, wondering if the sands have already begun to take hold on your mind. Regardless, the silhouette is fast approaching.

When the beast reaches you at last, your eyes correct themselves—it is not one beast but two. The snouted creature turns out to be a bórean with an exceptionally small head. The mole-woman reins in her snow-white mount and hails you from a cautious distance. “You there. Is the Winslie village up ahead? Tell me truths or I will know! Hurry, speak!”

In Yale’s previous life she devoted herself to a Stranger of Darkness and saved her only friend, a farmer, from a mortal wound by transforming him into a hellish lion. Before that she was a powerful spirit guide who served a leonian tribe, escorting the souls of their honored dead into the Otherworld. Yet further back she was a wunderkind plagued with genuine love for all lions, especially the most dangerous and fearsome. Needless to say, she has long been connected to the lions of Athanasia, and it is with them that she finds true kinship.

Yale awakened as a dendrite early in her current life, discovering her Strange blood when she reconnected with the soul of the farmer she once saved, now reincarnated as a lion cub in the Fenrir Forest. She and her family had been on their way back from visiting Tor Ysbryd Garreg when they found the tunnel they had come through collapsed. Immediately, they were set upon by fenrir bandits who took Yale’s mother and wounded her father. It was then that a snow-white lion appeared and drove off their attackers. Yale knew the lion for who he was, and named him Caerwyn, which means “White Fortress.”

After she recovered her mother and tended to her father’s wounds, Yale left with Caerwyn to rejoin his pride. But when they arrived Caerwyn’s family was missing. From the others of the pride Yale learned that a hunter had come through to kill the white lions for their pelts, harming many of the pride’s members before chasing Caerwyn’s family south toward Winslie country. After she did what she could to care for the injured, she and her faithful friend departed on their journey to find the hunter and ensure the safety of Caerwyn’s family.