1.4 The Archivist: Bastian Rask, The Rancorous
I have met five men who go by the name Bastian Rask, all of them sellswords, all of them ruthless. It is no coincidence. They model themselves after the true Bastian Rask, but none could even stand in his shadow. The savage acolyte. The son of coins. The claw of the North. The Rancorous. A mercenary so remarkable the truth of his life is even stranger than the stories told. Let us begin with the bloody tale told over casks of ale, that inspires soldiers and sailors alike to trade lives for gold just to make a name for themselves. Then, and only then, can we begin to unravel the labyrinthine truths of the life and possible death of Bastian Rask. It all began in Bristlepine Forest, or so the story goes.
On the eve of a great battle, two warriors crept away together. They were born under different banners and bled for different lords, but together, they were of one heart. Deep beneath the evergreen branches, they felt the warmth of each other’s love, but not long after, they felt the chill of death for a war with no reason. Miraculously, amidst the bodies, a child was found. Bloodied and pallid, but breathing still. Even in those first moments, Bastian let not a single whimper escape his infantile lips. A loving action brought him into a world of malice, and he was forever tortured by that confliction. A captain from one of the armies adopted Bastian and taught him not to be compassionate, but to be callous. Not to be empathetic, but to be ruthlessly determined. The captain himself was the son of a sellsword, and could only teach what had been taught to him, and so Bastian grew to love the whistle of a blade through the air. The Gavel, our dearly beloved council of rulers had yet to be formed, and Illusia was entrenched in a myriad of civil wars for lands rich with resources. The captain soon fell in battle, and Bastian cared not for the petty squabbles of territorial lords, so he fled the wars and sought work elsewhere. For years, he carved out a living amongst the tribes that inhabited the Apostle’s Back Mountain Range. They were notoriously aggressive with outsiders, but Bastian was different. They saw in him what they saw in themselves. While he was violent then, and unflinching, there was a sadness to him. A longing for something he never had, and could never reclaim. The mountains were not their home but they made a life for themselves there, and Bastian wished to do the same, so they welcomed him into the fold. It was deep in the mountains that he learned to hunt beasts and kill without so much as a sound. The mountain tribes fought and hunted with an elegance that Bastian was unfamiliar with, but he learned quickly. They also instilled in him a reverence for death. In such an odd place, high in the bitter mountains, Bastian was able to soften the sharp brittle edges of his being. But it didn’t last long, as the hounds of war finally caught his scent and invaded the mountains. Bastian and the tribesmen did what they could, but ultimately they were slain or captured, and the mountains became yet another piece of land to be violently exchanged for the price of blood. Bastian became callous once more, but a different kind. As he was once an axe blade, swinging wildly, he became an arrow, guided and singularly focused. If blood was the most valuable treasure in Illusia, he would trade it for coin and live gloriously. He spent years in prison until it was forgotten why he was there, and he was released to assume his new role.
He wasted no time, as he was a man of strict determination. In the underbelly of a city along the western edge of the mountainside, he found work amongst a collection of assassins. They were a cold loveless pack, wielding poison-dipped blades chipped and scarred from decades of life stealing. He fell in quickly and quietly with them, and before long, was given his first assignment. The killing of a king. Bastian didn’t ask why only who and where. The reasons had all gone, only the actions remained like a man possessed. Without so much as a whimper, the king was no more and the city tumbled down before the feet of the assassins. They paid Bastian a healthy sum and offered him a permanent position amongst their ranks, but he turned the offer down and left town. For years he repeated this process. Learning, trading blood for gold, disappearing. His name spread quicker than the wars he started and shined brighter than the fires that burned in his wake.
It wasn’t long until the wisest lords learned to use his strength instead of being subjected to it, and so, Bastian found himself in the employ of Queen Escia. It was then that he truly embraced his sharpened form, he the arrow and Queen Escia the bow. With impeccable precision, they brought death to hundreds, and by doing so, lined their coffers with gold. Ruthlessly, they wrestled control of nearly all of the Northern and Western regions of Illusia from the hands of the other lords. Once the domination was nearly complete, Bastian vanished in the night, leaving Queen Escia to fend for herself. Just as quickly as her empire had been built, without Bastian it melted away. The fear of him was enough to hold a kingdom in check, but the lack thereof inspired more rebellion than ever before.
Upon the mountain of gold he earned from Queen Escia, Bastian finally rested. High in the mountains, he built a fortress of stone, from which he looked down upon the maelstrom of war that nipped at his heels, desperate for him to return. Begging to offer up its coin to him. Sellswords would scale the sheer cliffs for even a glimpse, and if they were brave enough, or foolish enough, challenge him. Most fell to their deaths before they could even reach his fortress, but those that did would return forever scarred or disfigured, only enlivening the desire for him. A relentless, unkillable knight, but one with mercy for those who idolized him. After one hundred years, a battalion of soldiers under the banner of Queen Escia’s granddaughter scaled the mountain to recover any gold that may remain, convinced that the sellsword of legend would have long since died. They marched into the courtyard only to be greeted by a man, old and gray but standing tall and strong before them.
“How can it be?” They gasped. “How can you still live?”
Bastian laughed at the battalion, shaking the very foundation of the mountains with the depth of it. He drew two massive curved blades from his belt and stood at the ready before speaking for the first time in nearly fifty years.
“I have given death so much that it asks nothing of me. Forever I will rest here at the peak of the world, just like the world rests on the edge of my thumb. Everything around me has been built in my honor. Now, what will it be? Shall I visit death upon you and heighten its affinity for me?”
The battalion abandoned their weapons and careened down the mountain in fear. Never again did another climb the mountain and confront the sellsword. There he still resides, waiting.
Bastian Rask was born on a battlefield and raised by a captain, this much is true. He was swaddled with anger and disgust, which delicately crafted the nature of his conflicted being in youth. He fought for nameless men until the captain inevitably fell, and then he escaped to the mountains and lived with the tribes there. After quite a messy and nearly fatal trip to the mountains myself, I was able to recover a journal from those years that contained a few passing mentions of Bastian. The most interesting of which is the first. In the words of the tribesmen - a man appeared today. His hands are stained with blood, but it is not in his eyes. They are open wide with a look I find difficult to describe. It is regretful, certainly, and pained. But more than anything, he has the look of someone afraid of what he can do. No, that’s not it. It is the look of someone afraid of what he feels he is confined to doing. I see no shackles on him, but he believes them to be there. We have welcomed him in for now. There wasn’t another mention of him in the journal, other than a passing comment, until nearly two years later. The journal continues - Bastian has gone mad or rather embraced his inherent madness. The weather became too harsh to hunt, and in his idle anger, Bastian lashed out against us all. Lyall, Ferne, and Hammond are all dead. Keeta is badly wounded and may not last the night. The wildman stole off into the winter storm, hopefully for good. I was wrong about him. The entry ended there and was followed by nothing. It is believed by the hill tribes that Bastian returned to finish what he started, but I cannot prove it.
After absconding, I could find no trace of him for three years. What he did in those three years is unknown to me, and I truly have no desire to know.
His tale picks up in the North, where he did what he knew for many years. He began as a grunt for a mercenary company, not a kingslayer. Eventually, he did find his way into the employ of Queen Escia, but his renown wasn’t half of what the story would have you believe. He was skilled, certainly, but tempered death incarnate he was not. Queen Escia employed him more to keep her soldiers in line than to threaten her opposition. He was a tyrant, and nothing more. His reputation grew beyond what it deserved, however, when Queen Escia’s city was beset by a beast. It dug its way through the Eastern canyons like a worm and swallowed buildings whole before disappearing back into its tunnels. Bastian, thirsty for blood and glory followed it down. The city saw his action as valiant, but in truth, it was nothing but a dog digging for a bone. In a day-long earthquake, the beast and Bastian struggled, collapsing half of the city in the process, but Bastian prevailed. He was praised and showered with coin, becoming the city hero until two months later, when he brutally killed a couple and was arrested by the city guard. He was never allowed to return to the city, but his ties to Queen Escia were enough to free him from further judgment.
Bastian continued along this path for many years. For all of its flaws, The Gavel did bring structure to Illusia that was sorely lacking in those days. His single-minded aggression worked well in the culture of the independently governed regions, for it was nothing but a culture of strength. He became a mirror of the beast he slew, burrowing from city to city leaving chaos in his wake, and none sought to challenge him because he was nothing but what everyone wished to be. As for his death, I cannot be certain. There is an abandoned fortress atop the Apostles Back, but it is older even than the story of Bastian. He may have taken up residence there, but he did not build it and certainly does not still reside there, evading death. I doubt we will ever know his true resting place. Once his reputation grew, so did the reports of his defeat. Every mercenary wishing to make a name for themselves would claim to have killed Bastian Rask in fair combat, but none could prove their claims. There is one that has stuck with me, however. The strangest of all. A farmer in the south brought forth to his local lord an insignia, damaged and corroded, but still intact. The only one to ever be crafted, it was given to Bastian after he killed the tunneling beast in Queen Escia’s city. When the lord inquired as to where the farmer had found it, the answer was the unlikeliest of places. One of his goats had grown ill, and its body swelled tremendously, enough so that the farmer attempted to relieve some of the pressure by making a small incision in its stomach. As he did, a pile of bones and rotted clothes spilled out, with the insignia still pinned to them. He stitched up the goat and managed to save its life before bringing the insignia to town.
As a scholar, I cannot support this yarn, but I also cannot seem to shake it from my mind. There is something oddly fitting about it. A beast killer, blindly following his instinct, meeting his end in the stomach of a simple farm animal, following its instinct just as well. You are left to make your own decision as to the ending of Bastian, but I will say this of his life. He was the worst of us. Even in his grandest moment, saving Queen Escia’s city, he was acting out of selfishness. Pride, power, and respect were the only things that mattered to him, and if he sensed a hint of something not given, he would burst. It is disheartening that his tale has become the celebration it is, but I am not surprised. In its subtle ways, even the altered version can be championed by whoever may wish to embrace those qualities as Bastian did. If power is the guiding force, the result will always be pain. It may trickle down, or not be felt for generations, but it will persist. Bastian was a brutally forthright depiction of the danger of power, and I will do everything I can to see his story torn down from its perch of glorified pridefulness. In doing so, I will incur the wrath of his acolytes, but I am not afraid of them. Perhaps I’ll inquire about the purchase of a few goats.