Korvan Cold-Heart: Introductions Part 1
Korvan remembered vague things from his childhood. He remembered the trees, and by the Divines there were a lot of trees in Valenwood. He remembered his mother and father almost exactly as they had been; every pull in their clothing, every speck of dirt on their faces. What was even clearer was the night they were taken from him. He remembered the Imperials bursting in with their shiny breastplates and pompous swaggers, and how they shouted at his mother and his father. Then one of them drew his sword, and all was a blur.
And then his father’s head rolled along the ground to stop at Korvan’s feet. Cold, unseeing eyes staring up at him with an expression of unfathomable loss. That was the one image he could be sure had really happened that night.
Something tumbled to the ground beside him. His mother, her beautiful face destroyed by the dagger protruding from her left eye. Clutching a bundle of his clothes, he managed to find his way out of the house in the confusion, and hid in a patch of long grass. He was certain he’d be found, but perhaps the Divines were watching over him that night.
As the captain of the Imperials was sauntering towards the patch of grass, something jumped at him from the bushes. It was a vampire! The glowing eyes and huge fangs left no doubt about that. Korvan jumped up and scrambled away while he could, but was caught from behind by strong hands. He looked back fearfully at his captor, and a pair of glowing orbs met his stare.
“Fear not,” it said in a slithering sort of voice. “We will take you in and look after you. You can have your revenge on the Imperials when you are ready.”
Sheer panic and disbelief had stopped Korvan from crying, but now he burst into tears, and the vampire dragged him back to its lair. He cried for days on end, and the vampires fed him and clothed him and made him feel at home. He was greatly surprised by their generosity. But after a few weeks with them, they became oppressive, controlling. They were beginning to scare him greatly. He spent most of his time outside the cave admiring nature, or running errands for his masters.
Eventually he found a village near the cave, where he could go to get away from his solitude with the vampires. He ended up talking with the people in the village, learning about the ways of the world. But he never told them where he lived.
The vampires, meanwhile, continued to be cruel. They beat him and teased him, and sent him on errands of ever increasing difficulty and pointlessness. When he was nine years old and had been living with them, if living was what Korvan’s misery could be called, for five years, they began to teach him to fight with a blade. This resulted in broken bones more often than not, and they cut him open more than a few times.
Eventually, at the age of 12, he was becoming proficient with dual wielded swords. Once or twice, he even managed to land a hit on his oppressive masters. They were now beginning to spend more time away from the cave, and in that nearby village. They took Korvan with them one night, and he watched with hate as they threatened and bullied their way to everything they wanted from the Bosmer villagers.
Korvan continued to visit the village, but if it wasn’t the vampires molesting them it was the Imperials. Although he could never find it in himself to challenge them, he remembered his parents’ deaths, and swore to avenge them.
Living with the vampires for as long as he had had numbed Korvan to their atrocities. He was a cold, unfeeling boy who thought only of his own motives, which included the safety of the villagers, who had shown him kindness when no others would. One night, the village was brimming with drunken Imperials, and he saw four of them surround a poor shopkeeper and beat him relentlessly. Korvan watched with admiration as the man continued to get up after every blow, and when the Imperials got bored, they simply left.
“Just you wait till the Hunt! Imperial scum! You’ll get what’s coming to you!” he bellowed after them before turning on his heel and running away as the Imperials came after him again.
An idea began to form in Korvan’s mind, and he finally knew how he could end his misery with the vampires and get back at the Imperials. After asking around the next day, he obtained all the information he needed to solve the problem that was his life.
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