Role

Chapter 8

It wasn't as easy as he thought it would be, or maybe he just wasn't as strong
as he thought he was. Unlike the docile guild-mages of the Hollow, it turned out
that mages in wider Thera expected brash warriors to try to murder them and
were much harder to surprise. His first skirmishes were a disaster. A
necromancer he sought to end slew him instead, and one of these strange hell-
knights appeared out of nowhere one day and swiftly beat him to death.

Maybe these kinds of magic were the most terrifying and they weren't taught in
Evermoon Hollow because the king wasn't as stupid as Aulrathdien had thought.
He thought about that a lot. He wondered if the king had thought his ideals not
incorrect after all but rather too dangerous to pursue.

At this point in his life his only enemies were practicioners of magic and the
ancestral enemies of the wood-elves such as orcs, creatures he did not even
truly see as people. Also, his focus was on mages specifically and not magic in
general, exactly. He did not himself drink any potions, but he was not above
selling those he found to fund his crusade. He gave little thought to whether
magic might have gone into the manufacture of any arms and armor he used, nor
did he hesitate to take such actions as fraudulently seeking a membership in the
Tower of Sorcery. As has been said, while Aulrathdien lived by a personal code
of honor, it was a very Theran one and influenced deeply by the moral pragmatism
of the wood-elven people as well. He did not see any contradiction in these
choices. When enough of the mages were dead, these things would sort themselves
out naturally.

He does not yet think of himself as an applicant of the Village. know much about
them, or attempt to live up to their code, though it seems likely his life will
trend in that direction.

He has heard a little about Thror, the God of Hardship, and feels drawn to what
he knows of Thror's dogma, although he also wonders if a dwarven god of the
forge could take an elf who prefers more natural weapons seriously.