Alfarell

A 330-post collection

Challenge #04695-L311: Remedied Choice

A traveling hellkin was a highly skilled medic who knew how to make most medicines, use magic to heal, and was an accomplished surgeon. They did not discriminate with their treatments, and only charged as much as a person was capable of paying. Even if it meant just asking for a simple meal, or, not asking for anything more, than a thank you. -- Anon Guest

If someone looked no further than first impressions, he looked like a wandering vagabond carrying a dovecote on his back. They would certainly notice the horns, hooves, and spaded tail before they would see that the 'dovecote' was a sort of chest with drawers and doors. There were bundles of herbs hanging off it, and the Hellkin himself had a sickle and string on his hip. There was a posy of common herbs tied to one horn, advertising his trade where people were wont to stare.

He called himself Vitality, and he was a wandering healer. Wandering for reasons that quickly become obvious the more anyone learns about how the Unwelcome are treated in otherwise civilised territory.

There are some towns that Vitality walks through quickly. Some where he pauses to ask after the sick, but is hurried away. Some where he takes the longer path around, just for his own safety. The places that made his keep were the ones who saw him coming and, instead of readying the pitchforks and torches, sent out a runner to come fetch him in.

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Challenge #04694-L310: A Better Solution

They were born the only child in a family of immense wealth that had gained the ire of the local populace, and was taken from that place while still young and impressionable. The family were not killed, the local populace didn't want them to be able to have THAT much of an escape. Worse, the child, raised in a humble, poor, community with love, kindness, and knowing the values of a family that cared, was sent back to them older, and created

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Challenge #04693-L309: Combat Hypocrisy

If war is diplomacy by violence, then the currency of exchange is in the bodies of the youth. And so a General must make his bitter calculus, choosing which men to hurl at the enemy defenses in the grim hope that the righteous side is victorious. -- Deathshead419

The best kind of war, say many philosophers, is the one you don't have to fight. Many war hawks have ignored this wisdom and prefer to throw fighting youth at the enemy until one

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Challenge #04691-L307: In the Hour of Greatest Need

An apprentice healer saves a mysterious stranger from a fever. The thankful stranger gives the healer a box, promising that when the time comes, the box will open and the debt will be repaid. -- Deathshead419

Devryq never knew the stranger's name. They were just a fellow traveler at the waystation-house. One in need, because they were deep in a fever. Deveryq hadn't thought of rewards, just of the need ze could see to.

It didn't matter that the stranger was a

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Challenge #04690-L306: Not Your Average Teen

The child thought they were human, until they began to enter their teen years and certain things began to manifest that showed they were not. Small scales, occasional flame, they were frightened. Then a kind hand reached out to them and stated "No you're not a freak, or a monster, but child, you are changing. It's time you learned your heritage." -- Anon Guest

Everyone knows that things can happen to a body growing into maturity. For Humans, the usual speech is

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Challenge #04689-L305: Lessons of History

Over the objections of his advisors, the youngest of seven princes makes friends with a warren of kobolds whose home was right under the estate he'd been given. That friendship pays off during a brutal rebellion, when he is able to get innocents hidden so they do not suffer. How did the alliance form? He almost paid his life to protect the warren from poachers trying to take eggs. -- Anon Guest

History easily becomes stories. Some of those stories transform in

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Challenge #04688-L304: Miracles For Midwinterfeast

"Greatfather Langeven is a childhood god. He only sees that which is good in the world, and so comes for the children who believe they have been good. Which is terribly unfair to those who've been told they're wicked their entire, brief lives. But that's a different story for a different time."

The youth had always been kind, had always done their best to help others, even though they, themselves, were constantly being told they were evil, wicked, and, sadly, thoroughly believing

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Challenge #04684-L300: Unfeeling Love

I do not understand emotions, although my library has the definitions I do not truly feel them. Although, it is not written in my code, there is an unfinished task in serving my master. I am missing a part if I am not with them. Is this… desire? -- Anon Guest

I am Min-yun. I am made to serve. I am a thing of cogs and gears, run by crystals and magic. My master-maker-mother commands me and I obey. I am good

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Challenge #04683-L299: Help the Helper

They were a hellkin, but their horns never grew in. They had the tail, the dark red skin, black fingernails, though not claws, but no horns. As an adult they wore fake horns to try to be more like others of their type. Until another told them, "Horns don't matter, your kindness is in your heart." -- Lessons.

The basic Hellkin "starter set" if you wish to think about such things, is thought to be horns, teeth, tail, and weirdly-coloured skin. Red

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Challenge #04680-L296: Objection Lessons

There's a reason I'm called Patience. When someone calls me a 'teuf', I don't, normally, hurt them. And I will NEVER hurt a kid. However, I will teach why it's NOT a good idea to call one of my kind such. Sadly, some lessons do hurt, but I've never, happy to say, killed anyone. Though some wished I had before they finally learn. -- Lessons

Sometimes, they asked. "Why is it such a bad word? It's just the short form of a

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Challenge #04679-L295: Just So, No Snow

The war against the Northern Kingdom has not gone well. Now the remnants of the Southern army ready themselves behind the walls of their final castle, hoping for a miracle to break the siege. -- Deathshead419

They had fallen for one of the classic blunders - never get involved in a land war in the Northlands. Their worst and cruellest general was the very winter itself. Freezing boiling soup before it reached the bowl. Freezing men in their tents. Freezing breath so

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Challenge #04675-L291: Minding a Larger Flock

What a coincidence! Prince Philip has found a young shepherd boy who looks exactly like him living in the countryside. Even better, the young man is willing to trade places for a lark. With the talk of the cafes turning increasingly murderous with regards to Philip’s family, it would certainly be a good time to be a Shepherd Boy rather than a prince, though, the boy doesn’t need to know that… -- Deathshead419

Once upon a time, there was a

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Challenge #04674-L290: There Are Rules

A painter has been gifted with a wondrous, dangerous power: Everything this artist draws upon changes to match the image at dusk. Paintings come to life, stones become gold, hills cleanly vanish into valleys, even bodies shift shape.

The usual suspects are trying to steal this painter away to make weapons, fortunes, give assassins impossible disguises, ect. Perhaps Wraithvine can help hide this artist before those unscrupulous schemers use this human as a tool. -- Deathshead419

Whatever the gifted magic, it has

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Challenge #04672-L288: A Means to Reflect

So he said to the young hellkin...."There are generally two ways to go when the world hates you for how you look. Either be everything they say you are and worse, thus making them point at you as proof... or try your heart and soul away in proving them wrong, but you have to listen anyway. Or be, one of the good ones. If you find a secret third way, more power to you." This young hellkin found a "third way"

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Challenge #04671-L287: Fair Exchange

Unusual icon statues begin popping up all over the world. One puts in gold coins, and from the slot below, the exact amount of silver and copper coins comes out. The few times someone powerful enough to smash one managed to do so, they would find it not filled with coins at all. Merely more runes and sigils as it put itself back together again. -- Anon Guest

They were odd little altars. A figure of a Ravenfolk with an open beak

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