Profiles In History: Thorsten Cragstone
Thorsten Cragstone was an Aluvian warrior who had come from Ispar to Dereth early in our history; like all our forefathers he stepped through a portal and found himself in another world, unable to return: a world overrun by the giant insects, the Olthoi, who seized on the Humans arriving in Dereth and dragged them underground to tend the endlessly bubbling cauldrons of mushroom broth with which the Olthoi fed their grubs.
Such records as have come down to us do not agree about whether Thorsten was a nobleman or a commoner before he came from Aluvia. It is certain that we see him first as the leader of the small band of guerrillas escaped from the Olthoi and seeking a way to fight them, but whether this represents a trained leader automatically taking charge, or natural ability taking this first opportunity to manifest itself after leaving a traditional class structure, we'll never know. One thing we learned only in these latter days: he spoke with a "braid" (meaning "broad") dialect, pointing to an origin in the beautiful but rugged hills of northern Aluvia; whatever his rank may have been, he was a provincial.
He may have been taken into an Olthoi cavern from which he later escaped; he may have escaped their grasp from the start. He collected a small band of escapees like himself and together they wandered Dereth, living off the land and searching for means to destroy the Olthoi. They were joined by Elysa Strathelar, daughter of a scribe, who had escaped from an Olthoi cavern in a moment of inattention. They roamed over the land together, Thorstane with his great axe, Elysa with her bow, and they became lovers. It was about this time that Thorsten discovered a portal on the shore of what was then called the Olthoi Lake that led to an island in the center of the lake, on which there were no Olthoi. Searching further, Thorsten and Elysa found another portal to an underground city in which they were able to settle; there they could rest without fear and plan for their future attacks against the insects. At first only seven in number, they gathered other refugees and filled the City with life.
In time Thorsten and Elysa found a small island off the eastern coast of Dereth, and on it a tower to which they could find no entrance. Frustrated, Elysa struck its wall with her fist, and was portaled inside, where she met Asheron and begged him for a weapon against the Olthoi. Asheron gave her a vial of poison to tip her arrows, and thus armed she and Thorsten and their companions descended into the tunnels, fighting the Olthoi, rousing the imprisoned Humans against their captors, and winning at length to the chamber of the Queen. Elysa shot a poisoned arrow into the eye of the Queen; but as the insect fell she pierced Thorsten's body with her claw.
Thorsten's funeral was held in Chapel Blackspire, a little open-air arrangement of stone seats under the sun, on the shore of the lake south of the city named for him. His body was buried in a tomb worthy of a king, deep in the Underground City. Several months later Elysa bore his posthumous son, Borelean, and founded a line that lasted until the Cataclysm.
When Bael'Zharon broke free of his prison under the Inner Sea and arose in the Fifth Sending of Darkness, the land was severely shaken and the Underground City collapsed. With what effort we can only guess at, the tombs of Thorsten and Elysa were removed from there and taken to the Catacombs beneath the city of Artefon, which stood on the site of the long-ago swamp town of Sawato. They were reburied there with the bodies of other heroes. Not long after, the energies that accompanied the setting of the wards upon the Fettermounds, causing the land to ripple like water into which a stone has been cast, and sent the waters of the Prosper pouring into the valley of Artefon and concealing the Catacombs beneath a lake.
So matters rested until shortly after we had begun emerging from the Shelters. The Archons then commanded the Drudges to build a dam at Rithwic, to drain Lake Artefon, and to expose the Catacombs. When this had been done, the Archons took from the Catacombs the long-buried bodies of heroes and worked evil magic upon them. They reanimated the bodies of some and set them to roam Dereth as undead, attacking their own descendants; they imprisoned the spirits of others in crystals in the depths of their Holding. To Thorsten, however, they did neither of these things, but set his spirit wandering in eastern Omishan, to be sought with difficulty by the emissaries of Elysa. There we can find him today, if we look hard enough, wandering without rest, until the world is changed.
