Interview with Felix Sundown (Part 1)

I am not really sure why I have agreed to do this interview. Perhaps I’m worried that, once I do eventually die, there will not otherwise be anyone else to tell my story. Or, perhaps its because, given the recent discovery of the Feywyrd, I am now finally able to speak about things that I’ve been forced to be quiet about for over four hundred years. Whatever the reason, consider yourself fortunate to be the one to hear it first, before things get twisted by history’s lens. There is so much to tell though, I guess I might as well get started at the beginning. You asked me to introduce myself? Fair enough.

My name is Felix Sundown. In a children’s book, I might be called a gnome or perhaps a troll, but these terms are in truth derogatory names that have replaced the proper name for my kind: Fey. I have lived for more than six hundred years, with the last four centuries confined within the walls of Loaerth, the city of my captor and once teacher, The Archivist. Recently, I finally managed to escape the cursed bonds that have kept me silent for so long. How? I can only guess, but I suspect that it is because someone else discovered the fate of the Feywyrd, and thus unwittingly released me from my bonds. Allow me to explain…

When I first arrived in Loaerth the world was a place full of colorful and fantastical creatures of all sorts. Mythic demihumans, fey beasts and strange magic were commonplace. It was a world of abundance and diversity, where imagination was the only limit on possibility. I was a student of this magic, a Steward of Aram Court in fact. I had come to Loaerth to further my training under the tutelage of the Archivist Eurig Talfrun. He accepted me as his last student and bonded me into service. The bond was one from the Old Ways, a curse really. At the time I felt it was worth the sacrifice: a little of my freedom to be the sole pupil of one of the most influential archivists in all the realms. Little did I know of Talfrun’s ambitions, and it took decades before I eventually regarded my bond to him as a curse.

You may have heard a story of something the Helfay that happened an eon ago. It is often used as the reason humankind can lay claim to all the world and why Loaerth can expand the boundaries of its empire unopposed. But the Helfay is not a myth – it happened. The whole world was as I described it: a fantastical place full of strange and magical things. Then, in an instant, poof! On one mid-winter night all the world’s strange and mythical creatures, the Feywyrd as they were called, vanished in a silent icy moment. From wizards and students sleeping in Aram Court, to dwarves deep in Forgeholme. From dragons sailing on the winds of the Faertwins, to myrmidons a thousand leagues under the Degra Sea. Their lights just went out as they vanished like fireflies in the twilight. Whole kingdoms vanished in fact. I expect all the world’s Feywyrd vanished, save for one: me. You see, the Helfay was not an act of the gods, but an act of greed and hubris by a man, my master Eurig. It was the result of an ancient ritual he believed would return the Feywyrd the world he believed they came from. But he failed, and the failure carried with it the instant annihilation of not just the Feywyrd, but every other creature beyond the horizons of Loaerth.

Since I unknowingly participated in this ritual, I was fortunately protected by it, and soon found myself to be the last of the Fey. Eurig also allowed me to live on as his assistant and pupil. I was now a curiosity to him. He was the last of the Archivists, the only remaining practitioner of the Old Ways, and having the last of the Fey as his personal thrall was too great a prize to ignore. He bonded me to him again, only this time his bond would last until the Feywyrd returned, something he believed would never happen.

It was no coincidence that, after the Helfay, the people of Loaerth soon discovered the King and the royal family had vanished as well. They soon appointed Eurig Talfrun as Regent of Loaerth, and in time he became the leader of the world’s only remaining civilization: the Empire of Loaerth.

What else would you like to know?