The potion brewers

Grom - 900

Grom - knowledge

900: The emerald isle stood out as a pebble skipping along the vast pond of the Atlantic. Goliath stones appeared from the ground as if they were grown there in a bygone age, while steep cliffs of bare rock and moss patches guarded the interior from the worst the sea had to offer. Open tracts of untouched primeval woodland shrouded the island in a verdant cloth, disrupted only by the nearest lough or human settlement. Mist swept glens concealed the hidden trove of a peat bog, with mountain valleys traversing the land beside flowing rivers. Times had changed just as the seasons did with each passing year. 

Centuries since preachers of a new god displaced the old order of the Tuatha De Dannan into the annals of time and history, decades since a new group of foreigners had arrived from the east bent on plunder and fame. The new invaders pressed their advantage and dispersed across the whole of Ireland, still in the process of integrating with the locals and gradually leaving their mark on the land. 

On a morning overcast by thin cloud cover, a woman by the name of Siobhan was fleeing from a village on the east coast with her new-born child. Blood-soaked on her wrists, she sought a safe refuge for the baby where he could be safe to live without fear of what the Ostmen would do to him. The boy's father, an Ostman named Jorg, had been discovered by Siobhan while in the company of another woman. This treachery was punishable in the eyes of the Irish woman by death, leading to her current flight. Finally coming across a stone farmhouse far from her home village, Siobhan plead with the local farmer to take in her baby for a price. The farmer paid the woman's price before being left with the child. Siobhan ventured off down the dirt road and was never seen again. 

The simpleton farmer never intended to keep the baby indefinitely, instead viewing him as a piece of property that could be valuable to the highest bidder. Several days later, the farmer went into the market of the east coast village from where the boy's mother had come, but after an unsuccessful day of attempts to pawn off the child on the gullible villagers, the farmer returned to his land and dropped the baby on the boundary between his plots and the surrounding woodland. The baby was left alone for the next two days to fend for himself, until a black she-wolf emerged from the undergrowth. She took the baby deeper into the forest, providing him with berries to eat and her own milk to drink before setting off on a new journey.

 Three more days in the wilderness brought the she-wolf and the baby to a small, thatched cottage in the middle of a clearing. The wolf sat attentively at the doorstep, howling to receive a response from the occupant while the baby cried. Not long after, a tall graying mage called Arden opened his door and saw the wolf and baby below him. The man knelt down to the wolf and appeared to understand the creature's chatters as if it were speech. He agreed to whatever the wolf had told him and took the baby in his arms as the wolf retreated into the nearby wood, serving as a wild guard dog close to the house. Arden was one of the few pagan druids who remained in Ireland following a steep decline in belief of the old gods or the fantastical Otherworld where they resided. 

He was calm, patient, and curious of the natural world around him. He had trained with other druids throughout the island to get where he was there and then, having mastered divination, spells, ancient rituals, fortune-telling, and other forms of magic in accordance with the ancient rites of his elders. He, like the other remaining druids, were treated relatively well by the Ostmen as fellow pagans with fewer treasures than the more desirable dwellers of the new temples. The relentless nature of the invaders against the pious locals made them seek out any way in desperation to avert the total destruction of their country, even if it meant summoning the age-old wisdom of the last druids in the country.

 Arden had halted the assault of the first band of Ostman he had ever seen by using a trick learned from his father of summoning a rain of blood that caused the foreigners to completely avoid their land and respect them more than the average Irishman. Arden decided to raise the baby as his own, giving him the name of Grom. The baby had been exceedingly heavy for someone of his age and bore the auburn hair of the Irish mother he never knew, along with the freckles and rowdiness of his obscure Ostman father.