Surviving Ascalon's Destruction

Chapter One
Ashford

Mom said I came from a long line of proud people. Kings even. I found it hard to believe that, not that I thought she was lying but it just didn’t seem possible. We lived in a small two room cottage in a village called Ashford, not far from Ascalon City in Tyria. It was lovely there, we had our own little plot to farm out the back of the cottage. Sure there were problems, but what town doesn’t have its own problems?

The country side around our village was beautiful but seemed to be infested with vermin, mainly giant lizards called skale that nested in the river bank and fouled the clean water. There were other things too, strange beasts called Grawl that walked on hind legs but looked almost dog like. They handled bows and axes though with deadly accuracy.

Once I went up to the mountains with my pet Stalker Heartfang, and I saw some things there that looked straight out of a childrens tale. Giant monsters almost twice as tall again as a man that were made out of solid rock and ice.

For my fifteenth birthday, my dad made me my own bow, said I was growing up to be a young man and it was time I learned how to be one. Mum cried that night. That was over six months ago when Dad left to go fight in the war against the Charr.

I hope he’s alright, Devona said yesterday there had been no word from the north in a while but everyone seems to be tense as if waiting for something to happen. I’m not worried though, it’s a long way between Ascalon and the Charr homelands at Dalada almost a hundred leagues north across the top of the Shiverpeak mountains.

There’s fighting too in other parts of Tyria, no one tells me anything but I’ve noticed if I sit quiet long enough people seem to forget about me being there and pretty soon they start talking about the war again. There’s been trouble in Orr too, Orr is South of us almost as far south as Dalada is north. Ivor Trueshot said the Charr have attacked there too in vast numbers and the army was overrun in places, thousands were taken prisoner.

No one seemed to believe him, but Merrek and Menlo from the Temple of Dwayna at the Abbey have been whispering quietly together a lot and I heard them talking about meeting with a Necromancer down in the ancient catacombs.

There’s been a lot of talk in the streets lately too about how King Adelburn should be doing more to protect his people. No one really seems to know what he should be doing, only that it’s more than what he’s doing now. I don’t know what else can be done, everything seems to be going to the North and West walls that protect Ascalon.

Maybe people are just scared, there’s more bandits around the countryside than ever before. Lady Mary from down Fort Ranik way says the animals are scared too, she’s seen more spiders than ever before, that its almost as if they are coming out of the trees to hide in the houses and along roads.

It seems you can’t go anywhere these days without some creature trying to eat you. Mum's been really worried about this young girl Gwen. She’s a nice girl, but she plays on her own far too much and wonders about the country side asking travellers all sorts of question. Her mum is a herbalist, and Gwen is supposed to be helping her gather the ingredients she needs I suppose, but all Gwen seems to do is dance and play her flute – and annoy people to give her Red Iris flowers.
I don’t mind having her with me really, just ... I wanted to give those flowers to mum thought it might cheer her up and I could hardly hide them. Mum said its good that I keep an eye on Gwen, she says I’m becoming more responsible – what ever that means. I suppose it means I am growing up, I’ll be sixteen soon.

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