Background chapter: Mary

I am an ancient, which isn’t saying much because I was a goblin in my last life, didn’t even make it to my fifth birthday before I was killed after stumbling into a fight between two dragons, either that or it was a mating ritual, hard to tell the difference with dragons.

I was born an elf, and have since evolved into a dark elf. It was a pleasant experience, evolving, for which I am lucky, to some it is the most excruciating thing in the world, to others, extremely pleasant. There was a sparkle of light, and then I felt my body restructure itself, an odd, yet pleasant sensation.

I joined a mercenary party when I was 40. There were three other members of the party, a Halfling named zain, whom I would latter marry, an ogre who had the unfortunate name of stinky, apparently he was born a goblin, and an aloof naiad who went by lisa. Life as a mercenary was fun, nonstop excitement and adventure, sometimes when we couldn’t find a job we wanted we go dungeon diving, or dungeon crawling depending on the part of the world you live in. it was during one of these dungeon dives that a ring turned up, zain got really excited for some reason that I couldn’t understand, the ring wasn’t even enchanted. I was surprised a moment latter when he proposed to me over the corpse of the massive, fire breathing bear he had looted the ring off.

I said yes.

The wedding was conducted a month latter, with stinky being the one to officially marry us, as he was easily the most eloquent and well read of us, he was our mage after all. the wedding was a blast, my family showed up and my little brother challenged zain to a duel over my hand, much to the bemusement of all the attending guests. Needless to say my brother, a professional farmer, didn’t last more than 2 minutes with zain, and even that was because he was being played with.

The wedding went on for a day and a half, and resulted in three other couples getting married, as weddings like this often do. My favorite time was when someone (me) spiked the punch with a potent, fast acting psychedelic I bought from a local alchemist, who just so happened to be in attendance. That was when the party really got started, with spontaneous singing contests and lots of dancing. More than one person in the corner vomiting out their liver only to go eat and drink more. At one point a skeleton in attendance dismantled themselves and people started passing around his bones, I found the skull in my hand at one point and had a delightful talk about the weather in heaven this time of year. Eventually some people nearby got annoyed by the noise and asked the city guard to break up the party, what ended up happening was they drank the punch and joined the party. after that I don’t remember much of what happened.

I woke up in a pile of unconscious bodies and had to pay the people we rented the land from extra to clean it. looking around everything was a mess, trash, body fluids, and unconscious people were everywhere, the skeleton from before had put himself mostly together and was shivering in a corner without his head. Seeing that it was still in my hand I gave it back to him.

After a couple years we went back to zain's home town. While we were there he challenged the town chief, his uncle, to a duel. The result of that duel led to him becoming the new town chief. We kind of settled down after that, occasionally we would take jobs if the pay was good, but ultimately our party was retired.

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The two of us would train younglings in our spare time it was rewarding watching pupils you have trained go out and become successful in their life. Many famous adventurers and mercenaries have been trained by me, at least three have become gods.

it was during this time that zain and I tried to have a child, but, unfortunately, we are not powerful enough to have a child of our own, our biology is just too different. years latter we decided to adopt two young humans who were left with us, a boy and a girl. The girl is relatively normal but the boy seems off somehow. It kind of creeped me out at first but I quickly got used to it when he started training, I had only seen such amazing growth from a trainee once before, and they had become a god.

Several years latter the town was attacked by a group of bandits, they were fought off easily, as I was latter told, but that didn’t stop them from getting what they wanted, me. Apparently the leader of the bandits had taken a liking to me. The next week was hell, when I wasn’t being tortured I was fearing for the next time I would be. I was only given food twice, but was forced to drink healing potions every day or they would be injected into my stomach with a dull, rusted, syringe.

Help finally arrived in the form old friends and allies. Stink, lisa, and zain spearheaded an assault on the bandit camp. It wasn’t until latter that we realized that the leader of the bandits had ran away using a teleportation spell as soon as the fighting began. We spent months looking for him, we would have looked longer but we had duties to perform back home. We didn’t have much to go by in the way of searching, I had never heard his name, only his title, lion of the raiders.

When I got home I looked in the mirror for the first time in over a month, and was surprised at what I saw. My nails had turned black, and previously milk chocolate hair had turned white.

After that event the boy decided that he wanted to travel the world, and the girl wanted to join him. After discussing this with zain we decided that they were ready to do so. They went off to explore this world, occasionally bringing back stories that would make me remember the days when we could travel the world the same way, it a sort of melancholy feeling. While I was proud of the children I had raised, I missed the adventuring and mercenary life, but by now the Halfling is starting to get old, he wouldn’t be able to survive if we went adventuring again unless he manages to get an evolution that significantly extends his age or if we get an age reversal potion, but those are rare and expensive. There is no way we would be able to afford one without a lucky break, and forget trying to steal one. It would be quicker to just dig the grave yourself and lie in it while you wait for death.

But I’m happy, I get to spend my time with the man I love, while my children visit every once in a while bringing with them amazing stories.

End background chapter: Mary

i know i am pretty behind, i will try to write a chapter a day till i am caught up, but lets see how that works out.

this chapter should give you guys a better idea as to why jack is on his current mission.

next background chapter will feature asmodous