Hunilla the goblin midwife stood at the end of the bed in the little house on Berquin Avenue in south Sebacea, her face set in the mask of cheerful, reassuring determination common to her profession. “All right, miss Ayena: I just need you to push one last time. That’s it…I see the little head. Looks like a male. He has nice occipital scales. Very symmetric. Oh, my. He’s…he’s a…stout little guy, isn’t he? I’ll just…back up a little.”
Tol-u-ol became a standalone organism just as autumn was tumbling its chilly way into winter. He was the firstborn child of Ayena, a sciences tutor for local secondary schola students, and Erkis, who served as assistant manager of Furgo’s Feed ‘N’ Seed. Tol’s childhood was more or less uneventful insofar as major upheavals were concerned. The only real change that took place was when Erkis decided to resign from the feed store and enroll in the Goblinopolis Edict Enforcement Officers’ Academy. By that time he had four children and needed a boost in income. Beat cops didn’t bring in more than he had at the feed store, but he was educated and figured he could make sergeant after a couple of years.
Tol was four and a half when Aspet came into the world. The second son was smaller and frailer than Tol had been at birth, but then Tol had been exceptionally burly. Slightly more than a year later, twin sisters were born: Resu and Vesu. Tol was immediately smitten with them in a way he hadn’t really been with Aspet, although most of this was due to the fact that Tol was older now and these were, well, girls. Aspet was still too young for the happy event to have much impact.
When the twins were about a year and a half old, Ayena took them to be vaccinated against a virulent virus known as yample beast fever, named for the animal in which it was first observed. Yample beasts were large, somewhat unpredictable solitary quadrupeds that seldom strayed into urban areas except when under stress. One of the things that stressed them most, unfortunately, was yample beast fever. The virus had crossed over to infect goblins about a year prior and the very young and old were being urged to get vaccinations against the potentially deadly infection.
The place where Ayena took Resu and Vesu to receive their inoculations was a portable clinic that circulated among the poorer neighborhoods of Goblinopolis offering vaccinations, checkup examinations, and other routine medical services to those with limited access to permanent hospitals. South Sebacea was not exactly a prime location for anything more socially relevant than dive joints, warehouses, or drug dens. It was known as the roughest section of town, in fact—a reputation it largely deserved. When social services like mobile clinics came through, therefore, people lined up to make use of them.
Decades earlier a well-meaning but somewhat naïve Lord Mayor had spearheaded the acquisition of twenty hectares of land at the extreme southwestern edge of Goblinopolis earmarked for development as a public park. He had dreams of building a wide variety of multi-use spaces and sports fields to give the residents of Sebacea something to do besides murder, gang warfare, prostitution, and drug abuse.
It worked marginally for a few years, but recreational facilities without dedicated government oversight or a concurrent boost in the local standard of living were doomed to fail in the long run. The park gradually degraded to one of the most dangerous blights in the entire kingdom. By the time Tol was born, no one would dream of going in there without a small army and a very good reason. The only games played there now were those where the losing side ended up in the morgue, or more likely in an unmarked shallow grave.
In addition to unsavory characters, the park also supported a variety of wildlife, including a scattering of yample beasts. There aren’t many things of which a hardened Sebacean criminal is wary, but a grouchy yample beast is one of them. In goblins the virus that causes yample beast fever manifests flu-like symptoms for the most part, but in yample beasts themselves the disease presents with more enthusiasm. The final phase features madness, spasmodic movements, and complete loss of what few inhibitions the creatures had to begin with.
On the morning in question a big male yample that had been infected a fortnight previous had reached that stage and began to stampede back and forth with no obvious trigger or pattern, as though trying desperately to shake off the virus consuming its huge body. It broke through the fence surrounding the lot where the mobile clinic was parked and tore a hole in the metal walls of the trailer.
Once inside, the frothing beast bucked and thrashed blindly, without regard to furnishings, people, or basic structural integrity. Everyone dove for cover; Vesu and Resu were caught in the open and bludgeoned fatally by the flying hooves. The beast eventually kicked its way out and was found dead twenty meters away. While Ayena and several others were shaken up and received a few cuts and bruises, the twins were the only fatalities.
The incident was officially ruled a tragic accident that no one could realistically have prevented, and that would have been the end of it except for a magical message delivered to Erkis at the feed store a week later. It appeared on the desk in his little office at the back and was just a blank sheet of parchment if anyone but Erkis looked at it. For him, however, it contained a dire warning: the death of his daughters had been murder, not accident, planned and executed by a rogue mage named Zizmziz. The female bloodline of Erkis’ family harbored wiccalts: mutants who harbored a gene for innate magical abilities. The trait was in reality passed by both parents, but had only manifested in girls. This Zizmziz feared them for some reason that was not made plain; it was by his dark arts that the beast had taken ill and broken into the clinic. The safest course of action for Erkis and his family would now be to distance themselves from the twins’ memory as thoroughly as possible in order to avoid any further unfortunate ‘accidents.’ The message was signed by “A Concerned Archmage.”
To protect Tol and Aspet, Erkis and Ayena therefore did their best to erase any evidence of Resu and Vesu from the family’s collective consciousness. It was not so difficult in Aspet’s case, as he was yet too young to have formed much attachment to the infants. For the older Tol memories were of a more durable nature. They could forbid him speaking of his sisters and refuse to discuss them, but they could not delete all remembrance. Over time the sharp edges of his recollections began to blur, but his mental landscapes at night were filled with thoughts of them. Dreams and reality bled into a swirling fog, until by the time he finished schola Tol was no longer certain to which category most of the details he seemed to remember belonged. He knew he could never forget them utterly.
Tol was always big for his age. He was something of a bully in the lower grades, but began to grow out of it as young adulthood approached. He used sports and rough-and-tumble physical activity to cope with an influx of adolescent hormones and confusion about his place within the family. Aspet was considered the ‘brain,’ Tol the ‘brawn.’ Tol actually possessed considerable innate intelligence himself, but suppressed it because his little brother made him feel inadequate in that regard. Tol reacted by teasing his sibling mercilessly, but always with an undercurrent of affection that kept Aspet from truly resenting him in the long term.
They were, after all, family.