Dragon Storm Card Based RPG

Presented by Art by Susan Van Camp

First Change, The Character's Story
by Reuben Hinman

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First Change, the Character’s Story

Written by Reuben Hinman, Grandilar and Dragon Storm are © Susan Van Camp

Rhena didn’t mean to kill him, she really didn’t. She didn’t even understand how it all happened in the first place. Sweat made the Tigerean’s orange fur cling to her body. Huddling in the shadows of a back alley, behind a tall stack of crates, she drew the black tunic of the man she had just killed tightly around her strong shoulders. Rhena massaged her temples, trying to comprehend the evil thing that she had done, and had become.

Rhena had been raised by her mother in a small hovel in the city of Afhame, the capitol city of the Berlak Empire. The empire got its name from the Necromancer who proclaimed himself emperor of the region a few years before. Through his reign Afhame, and the other cities within his empire, had grown through trade and cheap peasant labor.

She was a typical peasant girl, which was supposedly atypical for her race. Tigerean’s had a reputation for being wild and irascible. Rhena didn’t know where these stereotypes came from, but she didn’t care, and neither did anyone else. In the eyes of the other sharecroppers (which were mostly human) that she and her mother worked beside on the city’s farms, her and her mother, Tara, were able hands who they could rely on to share the workload with from day to day. With thoughts of hunger, exhaustion, and fear of the nobles on the peasants’ minds, there was no room for thoughts of prejudice.

Life was the same, day after day. Her mother would wake her every morning before dawn so she could do the housework while her mother went out to work one of the city’s farms. The only change had come when she reached the age of thirteen three years ago. Tara told her that it was time she started working the farms as well, so they could receive a larger share of the city’s produce at the end of the harvest season.

Over those three years of hard labor, Rhena became beautiful and strong. As she grew, so did the number of courtship offers she received from the other men that worked on the farms. She rejected countless suitors before finally accepting an offer from a poor elf boy named Jerlon, who offered to take her to see a play that was being performed by a traveling troupe of Das-kar, fox-like humanoids that were renowned for being traveling performers, which had stopped into the city that afternoon.

Her evening with Jerlon had passed pleasantly. After the play ended, the elf offered to walk his date home. Hand in hand, they slowly made their way to the Tigerean’s hovel.

As they passed through a back alleyway, a large man in a black tunic, with the collar of his black cloak pulled up to his green eyes to hide his face, walked up to them. He held a loaded crossbow out toward them and demanded money. Rhena handed over a pouch which contained a few coins, and then the man told the elf to leave, the elf refused to leave his date’s side. The man made the same demand again, and again the elf refused. Snarling, the robber made a move toward the Tigerean. Jerlon stepped in front of her protectively. In response the man fired his crossbow at the elf, nailing him in the shoulder. Jerlon yelped and fell to the ground. Rhena screamed.

Filled with rage, she launched herself at the man. That’s when something strange happened. As she reached out her arms grew in length, sharp claws formed at the end of her fingers and toes, and her body became covered in blue scales. The man that stood before her did not have long to be amazed at the transformation that was occurring before him, because within a moment he received a large gash across his chest from one of Rhena’s new claws that killed him instantly.

It took Rhena a moment to realize that she was several feet taller than she was before. Her hand and feet were now large clawed paws. Looking over her shoulder, she saw she was slightly larger than the building she stood behind. The transformed Tigerean thumped her long tail against the ground, and flexed her new, bat like wings. Her heart sank; she realized that she had turned into a dragon.

She had heard of dragons through stories that the village elders told her when she was a child. They were evil creatures that used to rule the land before their tyranny was brought to an end by the necromancers. She had also heard stories of wicked people that were turned into dragons by Jikadel, as punishment for their vile ways. The peasants had been told by the local necromancer lord that if they saw one of these dragons to contact them immediately so that they could deal with these terrible creatures.

Rhena looked down at Jerlon’s pail frame and opened her mouth to speak to him, but all she could do was growl. Blood was on her claws, and the man that had tried to rob her lay dead at her feet. Her breathing quickened, she became frantic. What was she going to do? How could she explain this to her mother?

Many worries flew through her mind as she looked down at the lifeless form at her feet. Rhena knew that the peasants in the village would hunt her down and kill her. She resolved that the only thing to run toward the forest that was a mile away from the village as quickly as she could. However before she could take a step, she began to change again. In no time she was her old self, the only difference was that she was nude. Because of her large size her tunic had been torn to shreds in her transformation.

The Tigerean took one of the shreds of her torn tunic, and quickly dressed her date’s wound as best as she could. She then took the dead man’s tunic, her stolen money, and a rusty dagger that he kept in his belt. Rhena carried Jerlon back home, knocked on his parent’s door and left him lying in front of the doorway, then ran from the area as quickly as she could.

She sat huddled in the shadows of the alleyway behind a large stack of crates. Running a finger that was covered in dry blood across the large tear in the chest of the dead robber’s tunic that she had taken, she tried to comprehend everything that had occurred.

This site is copyright to Susan Van Camp 2007. Art on this site is copyright to Susan Van Camp.

Please do not download or use the art from this site in anyway without the express approval of Susan Van Camp.

e-mail questions to Susan at svancamp@mac.com

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