Realization

Life was a rough start for the bard known at Arliwes. It started with him losing his mother while she was giving birth to him, thus leaving him without much of a mother figure. His father was a tavern owner and often paid a nursemaid with food and room to watch after the boy until he gained age, but he never really fit in well. He was half elf and half human. He rarely made friends and almost always sought the company of himself when he was growing up. Singing what childhood rhymes he knew in hopes that something would prevent an aching sadness from tearing up deep inside him. Eventually, while Arliwes was in his father's tavern, there was a man who was passing through. He was dressed in a weird garb and had an instrument on his back. The man was a travelling performer and was planning on staying for a while in the area. He paid the Arliwes' father well for the room and the food he ate, often overpaying for it. He made the coin back easily, and often drew in more business by his small performance. Arliwes was entranced, as if the man's voice held some sort of magic behind it. He was curious and one time, sought the man out after he had finished singing. Arilwes asked the man how he learned to sing like that and the man told him of the guild of bards; a place where performers gathered and trained together in the art of singing, composing and performance. The boy was entranced at the idea of that. He found something he wanted to do in his life, and he planned on going to seek it out. He asked the bard where this guild was and he was told that it was at Seringale, the heart of their land, Serin. Time had passed and Arliwes had grown, singing to himself to keep up the practice, people in the town he lived said he had a lovely voice, but there was still a bit unwary of him. As there were times when he would sing and something would happen. Nothing major, but just slight things that worried the normal folk, but that in time it came to cause them to fear the boy. On the cusp of adulthood, the town formed a mob of sorts and sought to get rid of the boy, whether by forcing him out of town or maybe even worse. Arliwes had been prepared for such a thing not by knowing that the town would kick him out, but because he was planning on leaving to travel to Seringale. If he had only left a day earlier than he planned he would have been spared the cruelty of man. But alas, it was not the fate of this budding singer to know such a thing. The mob attacked Arliwes, a few dragging him out of his room and bringing him out for all to see. They did various things from mocking him to bruising him, but the worst they did was they sliced his with a multitude of cuts. He was crying in pain for so long that it stopped hurting, along with the tears stopping. And the boy came to a rather sick realization. That there are those who do things for sick pleasures just because they have power, whether it is in wealth, title, numbers or whatever. At that moment, the boy vowed to try his best to keep such things from happening again.