The Storm Shepherds - Darnalithenis of Felwithe

This book is one of the Storm Shepherd series titled "Darnalithenis of Felwithe". It is the story of a high elf that left his home for the wilderness and his further travels across the world.

Darnalithenis was born and raised in the beautiful city of Felwithe. Though he was groomed to join the ranks of the holy paladins that protected the city, he could never ignore the longing he felt as he stared deep into thedepths of the Greater Faydark forest. After much thought, he finally brought himself to steal away in the night and leave for the wilderness.

He would spend the next several decades living among the woodland creatures of Faydwer. He learned the secrets of moving through the trees undetected, on how to forage food from the land itself, or when the winters were hard, to track and hunt down game for his dinner. He enjoyed living his life being free of the constraints of the city, but he also knew that he would not be accepted amongst his kin were he to choose to return. One day, he came up with a plan.

Darnalithenis began to make as many arrows as he could shove in his quiver. When he was done, he gathered as much food as he could, then hiked to the western edge of the forest. Continuing through the foothills of Butcherblock he avoided the roads, and in turn, the dwarves that guarded them. After skirting by Kaladim, the city of the dwarves, he traveled for several days. Finally, he reached the docks that would take him to other lands - and possibly others like him.

The first place he came to was the great trade city, Freeport. Though it was not as clean or beautiful as his home, Felwithe, it still was larger than anything he had ever seen. He spent some time there, but not caring for the ever-increasing brutality of the guards, decided it was time to move on.

He continued to head west, traveling though dark forests, craggy mountaintops, and endless plains. Soon enough, he reached where the land came to an end. Choosing to follow the coastline to the north, he eventually found a glade populated with people just like him.

Darnalithenis knew that his journey was now at an end, for the people of Surefall accepted him for whom he was, not what he was expected to be.

Darnalithenis spent many years living among the tenders of the glade he now called home. He would spend his time educating those who journeyed to outlying forest on the ways to respect the wilderness. At one point, he even joined with a group of people who were trying to stop an army of gnolls that were assaultinga nearby village.

With him leading the party on a direct path to thevillage, they arrived just in time to join the fray. It was a bloody battle, and many people lost their lives, but the gnolls were driven back. As Darnalithenis left to return to the glade, he spied the party he was with killing hundreds of woodland creatures for nothing more than their skins. In a fit of rage, he slaughtered every last one of the poachers. When he returned to the glade, he knew that it was time for him to return to the solitude of the Greater Faydark. Darnalithenis traveled across the continent to the city of Freeport. Someone calling himself the Overlord now ruled the city and demanded an exorbitant fee to travel across the ocean.

Darnalitenis had no plan on paying this man any fee, so in the dead of night, he stole a ship and began to sail across the ocean. On the fifteenth day out his ship was attacked by a fleet of ships sailed by his dark cousins, the Teir'Dal. He leapt into the ocean, swimming for a nearby island he spotted.

He would spend the next several hundred years trapped on this island. He lost all hope of rescue, for the seas roiled with a fury that he had never seen before. To make matters worse, the cyclopses that lived on the island with him were beginning to overpopulate. Soon enough they would know that he lived there, too. And one day, they did.

As he gathered water from a stream, he heard the sound of the large rock flying through the air just a moment too late. As he lay there, back broken from the impact of the rock, he watched as the cyclops lifted his foot in order to crush Danalithenis's skull. A moment later, the Cyclops fell to the ground with a thud. Standing over the cyclops's corpse was a human, pulling a sword from the monster's back.
The man said, "It looked like you could use some help."


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Source: Ingame book