There are days when she misses the sea.

The fresh salt air is like nothing else, and the roll of the waves
would lull her to sleep on many nights. She was sea folk, truly, as her father and his father before him.
Her uncle used to say that if they couldn’t sail they’d waste away on land, like fish flopping futily out of
water. And true, there were days when she felt dry to her very bones here in the mountains. How it
seemed like she would be gasping for air when it was all around her, and her body longed to be
submerged within the waves, to float free.

She was a Stormbrand Orc. Kotyra Stormbrand. And she was proud of it. Being Stormbrand wasn’t just a
name, it was a history and it was a badge of honor. When she turned 12, Kotyra proved her worth in the
way all orcs of her clan did. She set out, alone, in a small one person boat and traveled for days without
anything in the way of provisions. Her task was not only to survive, but to thrive, and thrive she did. She
returned not a week later with the carcass of a fully-grown sea cat in tow. A single sea cat could take
down a half-dozen or so regular orcs, but her tribe had a secret. While she drifted along the waves she
demanded the spirits of the sea aid her. Stormbrand orcs don’t barter with the spirits, they demanded
and in return were rewarded for their fierceness. In return, Kotyra got her first tattoo, a picture of a
leviathan which stretched all over his upper arm shoulder, identical to the one her uncle got.

In fact, every member of the Stormbrand clan had a tattoo of the leviathan somewhere on them, the
symbol of their clan. Legend when that the first Stormbrand wasn’t a sailor, but a hunter who got lost
among the waves during the mightiest of storms. Rather than let the storm kill him as it thrashed and
tore apart his boat, the orc did the unthinkable and challenged the storm. With spear in hand he leaped
and attacked the elements. The two battled on for what would be days until both were wounded.
Bloodied and sinking beneath the waves, the hunter resigned himself to a honorable death, until a
nymph of the sea came to his aid. Enthralled by his prowess, she supposedly nursed him back to health
and fell in love with the hunter. And when the storm of the sea returned, in the guise of a great
leviathan, the couple fought side by side, and slayed the mighty storm. For that day onward, the hunter
named himself Stormbrand, and fell in love with the sea, vowing never to be apart from it for long.

Of course, Kotyra thought most of it was tall tales like all the orcs loves to tell. Her uncle was the one
who embellished it the most, claiming that he could hear what was supposedly his great-great-
grandmother even to this day luring him back onto the waves when the clan was ashore too long. Her
uncle was fun that way, always drunk, but never in a mean way like some of the others. She oddly spent
more time with his growing up than her mother, who took her duties as the vice-captain a bit too
seriously.

Officially, the Stormbrands were privateers of Coaltongue’s navy, commissioned to keep the eastern
reaches and oceans free from elvish threats and other foreign armada. Unofficially, they were pirates.
Kotyra learn to lie, cheat, and steal with the best of them, joining the raiders as soon as she was able
boarding enemy ships and plundering riches. She marveled at how the cannons would roar thunder and
the ships windtamer would hurl bolts of lightning in epic battles between himself and the mages across
the waves.

She was 14 when she met the man they called the Thunderer. Garand Thunderfury could make
mountains move, call down fire from the heavens, and once fought off an entire swath of raging lighting
elementals with nary by his own magics. His reputation preceded him as much as even the mightiest of
elven wizards. Above all though, he was an asshole.

Garand Thunderfury could have taught at any school of magic he chose. Indeed, a couple of them have
sent him invitations to join, with the Lyceum always welcoming Garand’s older traditional styles of orc
magics. As well, every year he gets a letter from some of his contacts within the Ragesian empire asking
him to start a school of his own alongside Leska and other high mages of the empire. Garand, however,
promptly and rudely refuses every time, and even only takes a new student every couple of years, and
only then if he feels like it.

She had always been fascinated with magic. Where her fellow clansmen chocked it up to things thatjust
happened, she always asked why and how. The ships windtamer, Jora, was always driven mad with
questions about how he called the air elementals that helped sail the ship, or how he cast wards that
kept them safe at night. He’d try to explain, but that always lead to more questions in which he gave up
answering.

It was during the middle of the summer months, and the crew had pulled into the port of Toren off the
eastern coast of Ragesia. The ship’s captain Horth the One-eye, her mother the second, and the
windtamer all had the idea of trying to buy an enchantment from the Thunderer to protect against
krakens, as it was high Kraken season this year and the beats were in unusually high numbers. Naturally,
Kotyra snuck along, keeping to the shadows. While the adults discussed business, she snuck into the old
mage’s sanctum, and marveled at the oddities. Nothing but the strangest components lined his walls.
Pickled tails, dried roots, and all manner of things decorated his place. And along the walls were a
multitude of scrolls, each written in a different language that she could hardly understand.

One of the scrolls thankfully was written in old orcish, which she sort of could make out. She took it, and
began to read, following the instructions as best she could. To her surprise the fire in the pit of the
house began to sway and move, yawning and stretching until it stood up like a man. But before she
could celebrate a booming yell echoed throughout the room and the fire was snuffed out like it was just
a small candle. Behind her the adults flooded into the room, led by an angry Garand. He scolded the
child for playing with forces she didn’t understand, then turned to the adults and promptly raised the
price of his work for being so careless with their young.

That day wasn’t the best for the young orc, but it certainly wasn’t her last. The Thunderer’s spellwork
would take a weeks’ time to complete, and during that week, Kotyra stalked him mercilessly, never
flinching nor honoring his demands for her to leave him alone. Every time he performed a piece of
magic, be it for her crew or for some other person, she was there, observing and inquiring just how
things worked. To her, his magic was art. And she had a choice to make.

Eventually the week was at its end, and the Stormbrand crew weighed anchor and sailed offfor another
few weeks at sea. Kotyra, however, snuck offboard. She knew that her clan would eventually return to
the port town in a matter of time, but she had more important things to do. Every morning from then on
she would camp out on Garand’s doorstep, and every day when he would see her she would beg for him
to teach her. And every day, he would say no.
She stalked him relentlessly. When he would buy ingredients for spells, she would buy the same ones,
albeit with what little money she managed to borrow from the ship. Days turned to weeks, and
Garand’s threats of turning her into seafoam or burning all the hair from her body for being such a
nuisance turned into muffled grunts as she continued to follow the old magus like a sick dog.

After three weeks of living effectively on a doorstep, a harsh rainstorm brewed up, swallowing the town
in torrents of precipitation. Kotyra was no stranger to harsh weather. On the ship it was more or less a
facet of life. Still, Garand finally took pity on the girl and opened his door to let her inside.

There was never really a point where Kotyra officially became his apprentice in the arts. She went from
stalking him, to just watching him work, and doing meaningless chores. Eventually he had to running
errands on his behalf, collecting things and yelling at angry clients. She was good at that last bit.

There was no real common equivalent to what Garand named his arts. In orc it was Wu Jen , which
roughly translated as spirit witch. Garand may have been cantankerous in his old age, but nobody could
ever describe him as quiet. Garand would go on for days about thinks he hated or things which were not
right. He absolutely hated modern magic It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t natural. He told stories about how
babies blessed with modern cleric rites turned out confused, or how the elves and their unnatural
methods of growing food caused diseases. The only proper magics were the old traditional ways, dealing
with elementals and the spirits. Heck, even elves themselves were wrong, as anything that lives that
long cannot be organic. Garand taught her that keeping one’s self pure and natural was the way to
power.

One day, years later, the emperor Coaltongue summoned a meeting of the highest mages of the empire.
Kotyra had never been to the capital Ragos before being seafolk, let alone so far inland. The city was
immense. Gartand looked uncomfortable, more so than he always did. Kotyra got the sense that he
stayed away from cities more to keep life simple than deal with modern times. The meeting of mages
lasts days, and while Kotyra wasn’t allowed to speak, being Garand’s prime apprentice allowed her the
freedom to at least sit in on the councils talks along with the other apprentices. They discussed matters
that frankly went over her head, though she did seem to gleam a hatred between Leska, the witch in
control of the empire’s inquisitors, and her own master. As much of a conservative he was when it came
to political views, Garand was usually outvoted. At night when they retired to their rooms, he would go
on about how much Leska was a shortsighted fool, and how her trust in the twisted newfound arcane
arts ruined her mind. Leska was dangerous, and had the ear of the emperor, but Garand knew that his
reputation and power kept her from ever attempting anything against him.

Garand would always be summoned to these meetings over the years, but he and Kotyra settled into
her training. Occasionally she would ride back out to sea with the Stormbrands when they needed extra
magical might, in which she and the aging windtamer would get into fights about what is and is not
appropriate magics.

And then the emperor died.

The how and the why of Coaltongue’s death made no sense, and Garand wasn’t in an explaining mood.
Combined with the mystery affecting all teleportation and distrupting travel, things were serious. The
day after he found out, he tasked Kotyra, now a young adult woman, to watch the old magus’s home as
he left to the capital. She didn’t hear nary a word from him for days, until one night he burst through the
front door looking haggard and like he was fearful for his life.

Leska, was the only word he spoke before he shunt the apprentice into a rope trick. Outside, she
heard the muffle sounds of thunder and battle, and when she finally dared to come out, she found the
old thunderer’s home in complete ruins, with no sight of her master.

Kotyra did the only sane thing she could do. She ran. It was only through rumor that she learned of
Leska’s coup. Her first thought was to head back out to sea, but the Stormbrands were well off the coat
of Dassen this time of year., and besides, she was a known student of Garand’s, someone Leska wouldn’
t let go so easily. Thus she headed out to Gatepass.

She had been to Gatepass once before, on her various travels with Garand. The city was impressive for
being largely a hole drilled through the mountains. Garand had ordered some research into the
cosmology of another plane, though he largely spent the time arguing with Gabal about every little thing
the two of them could think of. If she could have managed to reach the city, she could inform the elder
magus of the town about the disappearance of her master, and hopefully, get aid in recovering him.
Leska’s purge of any who dissented might have scared a lesser orc, but Leska was Stormbrand. She had
grown up fighting things far greater than herself, and she wasn’t going to let some upstart outdated
witch get by without feeling the fury of a Stormbrand’s wrath.