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You probably heard my name - Valera. I built this castle and began the Age of Heroes, but before... long years ago... I was a young man and I traveled the land with a bunch of my friends and with rusty sword in my hand... I had many long journeys before I became a true hero of might and magic. Listen to what I have to say, my friend, and you may re-live my adventures and learn from them too...
When I think about my childhood, first thing that comes to my mind is the town of Broadworth. Broadworth was built on a free land of sunny swamps. It was first settled by humans, but the native creatures of swamps, who at first appeared ugly and horrible, appeared to be so different on the inside. As Turoz told me, when swamp creatures first came to the town, human settlers were outnumbered and unprepared. They ran for their swords and bows and didn't notice that one of their children, a three year old infant, approached Turoz the gorgon and without any fear climbed on his back. Mother was shocked and fainted as she noticed what was happening. Six men were standing armed now with five women aiming their bows from behind. They were facing three gorgons, shadows of lizardmen were lurking in the woods around, pack of serpent flies was hovering in the air, seven basilisks gathered a semicircle behind gorgons and two wyrens with their gnoll riders patrolled the area around to see if we, humans have reinforcements. It was amazing to see the two sides standing still in their battle positions. Turoz was in charge of the mission of killing the intruders, but as he saw the child fearlessly crawl onto his back and the actions of other humans, who had a clear escape path, but chose to stay and fight for their child... Hearts were beating fast, humans prepared for death and waited for swampers to attack... Half a minute of stillness seemed like a whole hour and finally Turoz spoke with a human voice, "For what purpose, you humans, have intruded our land?", father of the boy stepped forward and put his sword down on the ground "We come in peace to live in this land and make it proud of our deeds. If you want my son for food, please let him go and take me instead, for I will be a bigger meal". Turoz replied "We don't eat flesh of those who were of no evil to us. We don't mind the land as long as it is used for good purposes. You have a choice: you may take your child, collect your possessions and we will let you go in peace, or else you will build the big town for yourselves and us and we together shall make the land glorious". Boy's father said: "And the peace may be from today to the end of our days for the fame of the land, ourselves and our new allies! We believe in your kindness and will surrender our weapons in the sign of friendship", humans hesitated for such hasty and dangerous decision of alliance with monsters, but the leader hero has spoken and his decision is not to be questioned, if he dies, we all die. All weapons now were on the ground and Turoz has spoken "May this day now be called tevake, which means alliance!" and everyone around, who had the speaking ability, repeated at once "Tevake!". Good times have followed, humans and swampers had a lot of things to teach each other. Town of Broadworth was built within six months since Tevake. Building was easy with the help natives: gnolls were excellent tree choppers, lizardmen knew a lot about carpentry, serpent flies could find anything in a matter of hours, be it a good tree to chop or a stone of the right shape, basilisks were the experts of stone, gorgons could make fire just by using their breath, noone around could beat wyren's strength and natural medicine knowledge and as for hydras, they were the best directors, they could watch few things and give several orders at once with their multiple heads. Broadworth had dwellings for all kinds of swamp creatures, fort and walls, tavern and a cage of warlords, where heroes taught principles of self-defence.
I was that boy who has began the Tevake without any intention. I barely even had a memory about that scene. I was used to living with swampers for as long as I can remember. I probably wouldn't even know about the story if my parents and Turoz haven't told me. As for Turoz, he became my best friend, he taught me many things and we spent much time together. Gorgons can live for several hundreds of years, they become very wise. Turoz was about a hundred, the best age of gorgons, just like our late teens I guess. He liked me at first because I wasn't afraid of him, because human principles have not yet affected me at that age. He kept saying that one day I will become a hero, somehow he knew it when he looked into child's eyes... gorgons cannot be fooled by looks, when they look into your eyes they see many things about you that you don't even know.
Among my other good childhood friends were Talet, Rokel, Quixen and Zu.
Talet was a lizardman and Rokel was a gnoll, both about my age. Gnolls and lizardmen are human-like, but lizardmen have better senses and are generally a bit weaker physically, but compensate with dexterity. Gnolls have more strength, speed and better senses, but are no good when it comes to science or magic. With those differences we always play-challenged each other in different arts like bow shooting, running, jumping, stonelifting, magic arrow etc.
Zu was a serpentfly. Serpentflies cannot speak because their lungs and throats are too small, but they have their own language of sounds, which of course has less words than human language. serpentflies live only about 20 years, but they are the fastest creatures around. No wyren in the land can keep up with serpentfly's speed, but the speed is not the most important ability, flies have excellent vision and notice every little landscape detail even at their top speeds. This is how we met: one day I was walking through the forest when I heard a branch crack and a weird noise after that. As I came closer, I noticed a serpentfly trapped by a heavy branch. I could see that it was in pain, but the branch was way too heavy to lift. Broadworth was too far away, the fly would die if I went for help. I knew the "remove obstacle" spell, but I didn't have enough mana for it, I was tired. Serpentfly's life depended on me, so I tried to cast the spell. The next moment I remember was when serpentfly was sprinkling water over my face and it was almost dark... The spell worked, but I lost a lot of energy due to a lack of mana. However, it wasn't water that the serpent fly was sprinkling my face with, it was some kind of magic healing potion, so that's how it healed itself and then me. "What's your name?" I asked. Serpentfly was hovering around and making noises, unable to speak. It sounded like "z-z-u", so I said "Is your name Zu?", Zu nodded. That night we spent in the branches of the tree, swapping watch duties. I was woken up by Zu's noises, she woke me up because someone was approaching, and as I looked closer, it was Turoz! I was glad to see him, but how was he able to find me in such a huge forest? The answer was simple: he was advanced in earth magic and view earth spell could find any person or settlement around. I said byebye to Zu because her home was here, but it appeared that she knew of Broadworth and just as distance was no problem for a serpentfly, she visited me once in a while.
One night in Broadworth we were woken up by a signal of one of our nearby net traps and went to have a look. Zu was carrying a torch and once she hovered above the trap we saw something we least expected - a single handed stone golem! I've never seen a golem before, he looked like one of the statues any skilled basilisk can make, but he was also moving and making noises! We couldn't make sense of what he was saying, so we put another net over him and dragged him back to Broadworth. I asked Turoz if he knew what this thing was. He told me that not too far away from sunny swamps there's a huge mountain which rises above the clouds and some people say that rains fall as tiny flakes of ice up there. There live wizards who create creatures like this golem using magic to serve them. Nobody currently living at sunny swamps have ever been up the mountain and nobody can either remember one of the wizards coming down to the swamps. All it took is one look in the eyes from Turoz and he knew much about the golem. "His name is Quixen, he was created from a stone statue by his master wizard for the purpose of keeping all-day and all-night long watch after his master's domains. He spent over 20 years serving his master and that's when side-effects of the spell started to show up: wizard gave Quixen too much personality as an experiment and unlike any other golem, Quixen felt desires to learn, think and had tendency to get bored, and that's what happened. He was often asking his master to teach him new things, and once per month or so, the master would agree and teach him some science and magic. When Quixen told his master that he's really bored of the job, to his surprise the wizard smiled and said "I was waiting when you finally admit that, and I'm glad, my spell worked perfectly. I taught you quite a lot and now the best thing for you to do is to go on a journey of finding a master who will suit your needs for changes, I am too busy looking after my domains to travel, you see... you need someone young, the one who learns the ways of might, the one who needs to travel to know, unlike any wizards who know anything using magic. I wish you good luck on your journey and as a gift, take this scroll of haste, it will prove useful. Farwell!", and the wizard disappeared, like they usually do. Quixen picked up the scroll and went to the south. He traveled for a couple of days until he walked into another wizard's domain. Wizard was alarmed by his gargoyles and arrived to take care of the intruder. In his opinions golems were mindless slaves and someone else's slave on his domains must be destroyed. Wizard cast the ice bolt, which broke Quixen's arm off. Quixen quickly picked up his arm and cast haste on himself. Wizard was amazed as Quixen was moving away at an incredible speed for stone golem. Spell-casting golem would be a nice slave, he thought and sent a genie after Quixen. Quixen ran without looking back, genie was careful and quiet. As golem ran off the mountain into the lava lands of the south, effect of the spell wore off. Genie quickly caught up and approached for an attack. Quixen cast haste again, but it was too late, genie already was casting another spell on Quixen. To the genie's stupidity, this time the spell was berzerk and as Quixen was neither alive nor lifeless nor undead, not like any other creature, berzerk had an unusual effect on him: he started running away with all his anger and the speed of haste which made him so fast, genie was slowly losing him. Quixen ran past the lava lake. Efreet was taking a nice lava bath as he heard the loud noise of golem's stone feet. His eyes widened as he saw golem's speed. Anger for disturbance and desire for competition made efreet chace Quixen, but as he took off, he saw a genie approaching. Golem instantly disappeared from his intentions as he attacked genie. The golem was now far away rushing mad while the past chacers were battling it out with the fearsome hate towards each other. When the spells wore off, stone body of the golem was in the worst of conditions, he didn't know where he was, he lost his arm and the ground was a mix of water and grass, almost impossible to walk on. He walked for several more hours as it got dark he fell into one of our traps. That's his story which he can't tell at the moment. He needs rest and cure and as I see no bad intentions in him, we can let him stay, he may teach us a lot. Our basilisks can fix him, I suppose his lost arm is not too far judging from his memory." Zu volunteered to start searching next morning. Golem was put into a secure chamber and we all went to sleep. I was very excited with Quixen's adventures. That night the idea of leaving the town and going onto a journey started slowly growing. It took just a couple of hours for Zu to find the arm: mountain stone was quite different from the stone we had in swamps. Zu almost fell down as she brought the arm, and I was quite amazed that she could carry it anyway: she grabbed it with her tail while the arm weighed more than Zu herself. Basilisks made a good work of putting the arm onto it's place. Couple of days later Quixen slowly started speaking and coming to his senses. He settled in Broadworth for a while to heal and teach locals some air magic. At first everyone was staring at him like at some strange walking statue, but soon got used to him.
The story has just began, my friend, and many adventures lie ahead, but that's all I will tell you for today. Think, imagine, learn and I shall continue the story of my life next time we meet.