Knight of the Church
By Loehn Rawdin-Morris

Tessa was born to a small family of hard working, kind and honest lower, middle class merchants of the Harbain Confederation. She had two older brothers and one older sister, but also lived with grandma and grandpa in a small farmhouse on the edge of town.

One day when she was about 3 years old, her family took a trip to visit relatives in the neighboring kingdom of Kalishar. Not being able to afford the conveniences of travel by magic, they undertook the trip by in the normal style; by unescorted horse and carriage.

This should not be, however, a cause for overdue worry, as danger and risk are a normal part of life in this world, and both her father and eldest brother (19yr Nathanial) were part of the hometown militia and trained in combat. Her family had already made this trip several times (though this was Tessa's first) and they were traveling on the most frequented roads. Sadly, good fortune was not to be with them this time.

The family had been traveling just a few days when one evening, right around dusk, a small group of human and half-orc thieves ambushed the family from the roadside in the middle of a dense patch of forest. Her Father and Nathanial, indeed the whole family, must have fought very bravely, as they managed to kill 5 of the attackers before being overwhelmed and murdered. Hopefully the gods were merciful to her sister, who's body was never found.

Little Tessa, either by some ironic sense of mercy from the the gods or just pure luck, not only managed to avoid being killed but also managed to remain completely undetected. She had apparently become trapped under some heavy cushions within the carriage when it was tipped over by the attackers.

Whether she was knocked out by the fall or just to petrified to speak, she never cried out during the battle and thus the attackers were never the wiser to her presence.

Luckily for her it was only mid-afternoon the next day when a group of nun's happened upon the carnage and, as they buried the bodies, heard her crying from under the pillows. The nuns, though they looked long and hard, could not find any pieces of identification about the family or where they were going, for it seems in an act of pure cruelty, the thieves had purposefully destroyed all such info in an effort to minimize retribution and vengeance.

Having no clue as to her identity the nuns took the little girl to their Abby in Kalishar and raised her as a sister. Although the nuns were as nice to here as possible and looked after all the childern as if they were their own, it took several years for the little girl with curly brown hair to finally start speaking and playing on her own.

Although she couldn't remember much from the attack or before, and unfortunately not enough to find any relatives, she did say that right before the nuns found her two filthy, dirty, hungry little road gnomes had come across the wreckage and, among other things, stolen the doll she was holding on to. They probably would have tried to steal her too had the nuns not come around the bend at that moment, sending them scurrying into the woods. From then afterwards she kept a fierce dislike of any prank or joke that involved the misery of others, especially if it involved gnomes or stealing.

Given the name of Tessa by the abby sisters, the little girl was always quiet and kept mainly to herself. She never showed any interests in the normal kid activities, preferring to spend her time along in the garden or with the quiet old kitchen maid scrubbing dishes and baking bread.

When [Tessa] was about 12 she happened to see (what she only knew then as a knight of god) visiting the Abby and watching the boys practice sword fighting with sticks. This instantly struck a chord in Tessa and from then on she was obsessed with learning everything she could about the knight. The nuns of course thought this completely inappropriate for a girl and, besides answering the occasional question, refused to let her practice combat with the boys or have anything to do with such behavior.

This however did not stop Tessa, and she spent every possible uncaught moment practicing with sticks, reading all she could about holy knights, fighting imaginary evil and being a tomboy in every wa[y] she could. It wasn't until two years later, when the nuns observed her beat every single boy in a sword fight that they finally concluded that the path of a paladin might be god's will for Tessa.

Several months later when the knight came back they bid her goodbye and, after some convincing for the knight, sent her to train with the Paladin's of Kalishar.

It was under the demanding tutelage of the Paladins that Tessa spent the next eight years of her life. At the age of twenty she graduated from the academy and set out with the mission to help those in need and vanquish evil wherever she should find it.

 

[ Several notes on this story: nothing agaisnt the author, but there are a few inaccuracies reguarding world history. The most glaring is the presence of half orcs, which are biologically impossible and do not exist on the planet. The second has more to do with geographical distrubution of the races. The story is set in the northern contenent of Osclog in Kalishar and the Habirian Confederacy, gnomes however generally reside on the southern contenient of Haukni, when they do move up north it is generally to the Westerlies. That isn't to say the meeting with the gnomes couldn't have happened, it is just unlikely.]