Note:  Breann Honeycomb is my female Halfling Ranger in a long-running D&D Campaign and I thought I’d rekindle my writing bug by giving you her backstory leading up to the start of the campaign.  This is just an introduction, the rest of the series will be told in short story form.  Hope you enjoy!  Pjacks

Introduction to Breann Honeycomb

Breann was born into a sheltered little Halfling hamlet nestled into a small mountainous range west of Dambrath.  Her people were peaceful, naturally joyful, and kept themselves hidden from the world, only venturing out to fish and frolic in the nearby Bay of Dancing Dolphins.

Barely old enough to walk, Breann still has flashes of memory of an ominous fog rolling in from the Great Sea, creeping across the Bay, stealing into the mountain, advancing on their village at a slow and steady pace.  The halflings were caught completely off guard when seafaring fiends descended upon them in a brutal and bloody attack, hidden within the fog.  Breann’s mother reacted with surprising speed, scooping up Breann and shoving her into a hidden opening they were planning to expand into an additional pantry, taking precious moments to place furniture in front of it and use a great amount of magic to conceal it from all who would harm the child within.  Breann can still hear her mother’s screams as she sits in the dark, terrified and frozen mute in fear, in recurring nightmares that haunt her still.

To this day Breann does not know how long she huddled there in the dark – days? Weeks?  When a Ranger made his way into the village, tracking the fiends and following the trail of death and destruction they had left behind, he found  himself drawn immediately to one of the Halfling homes, pulled towards a wall, gingerly stepping over the decaying bodies sprawled across the floor, shoving furniture aside without knowing why, and discovering the Halfling child, starved, shivering, and terrified.

The Ranger, a youngish human male known as Gavin, swore on the spot to protect the Halfling child with his life.  The fiend trail having disappeared in the Halfling village, Gavin took Breann back to his secluded home in the Wilds and spent the next few years training her in the ways of the Ranger.  When he felt she was old enough, Gavin told her the story of how he had discovered her, sparing her the gory details of her family’s demise as much as possible but handing her a token he had discovered clutched in her mother’s hand, perhaps torn from her attacker.

The token seemed to be a marblish-type stone, strange dark veins running through the lighter stone.  The stone remains warm to the touch always, small enough to fit into the palm of her hand.  Etched into the center of the stone is a pitch black outline of a skull with two horns stretching out from the forehead part of the skull, just to the outside of each eye hole.

The years passed quickly as Breann watched Gavin age while barely changing herself.  She became an expert in bows and tracking, helping Gavin when his Ranger duties called, hunting and wandering with him when they had time, returning home on occasion to rest and recharge.  Her only friends besides the kind Ranger were the animals she befriended, fed, and protected when possible.

As Gavin grew ever older, Breann took over most of his duties as Ranger, traveling more often and further away.  Returning from a long trip, she discovered Gavin waiting for her, on the brink of death but stubbornly holding on for her return so that they could exchange heartfelt goodbyes.  She buried the Ranger as per his people’s custom and for the first time since she was a child, she was once again alone in the world.  She spent the next few decades wandering aimlessly, returning occasionally to the only home she could remember.

On one such trip she found herself awakened from a horrible dream … a giant, land altering, species ending disaster that left her shaking and horrified.  The dream repeated more and more often, a dense fog spreading across the land, fire and black smoke billowing up and out, a giant figure rising from the middle, horns followed by an enormous face, entirely dark, no visible features other than eyes of magma and a horrible, jagged toothed maw that opens and spills out a spine tingling laugh of pure evil.  When the dream begins occurring even during waking moments, Breann finally acknowledges it is not a dream, but a vision.

She packs everything she owns and sets off, unsure if she will ever return, to travel the land and try to find information about what she is seeing – looking for portents and eavesdropping outside of large towns in hopes of gleaning any kind of knowledge about what is coming.  Her natural instinct to remain alone keeps her wandering for several years until she finally realizes that she has learned as much as she can on her own.  By this time she has worked her way through the country up towards the northernmost points.

Outside of a large city she hears about a place just outside of town that is recruiting adventurers and she decides to join up for now.  Breann makes her way to the home of the Crimson Fist and signs up, determined to solve the riddle of the vision and stop it if possible.