LUNACH KINSLAYER - a chieftain with few friends (and even fewer kin)
MUTIMIR THREENIPPLE - another chieftain, in search of a better nickname
PAYL - the Shining One, a female chieftain
IRIJA - her friend, an archer
MEELI DEADEYES - Payl's friend, who frightens most everyone
BROER BUGEYES, GATIS THE YOUNGER, REEGO REDFINGERS, and EERO - Uplander chieftains who want in on the action
Izumyrians
BARSAM - young heir to the Northern Duchy
ANFROY - a military engineer
KEPTEL - a man at arms, whose mother was Hvadi
INGRAM - a reasonably friendly captain
LIR - his nephew
BARON VOSS - advisor to Barsam, somewhat of a stuffed shirt
BARON KAIM - advisor to Barsam, a man of few words
DULO - owner of the Marga inn, a capable woman
RASIPH - an old regular at the inn
KURS - a brave young man
Once again, I want to thank Alianath Iriad and Lastman416, my editors and first critics. They made several corrections and many suggestions, one of which resulted in an additional chapter and improved the ending quite a bit. Any remaining errors are mine alone.
Thanks also to Comentarista82, for his enthusiastic support and encouragement. (No - it's not an alias of mine, and we're not related.) Thank you, too, to the readers whose names I recognize now, because you've supported and commented on some of my previous efforts.
Obviously, I'm not in it for the money. But I enjoy creating new worlds, and especially these characters. Yes, I was a DM (Dungeon Master) for my D&D group. Surprising your players with a plot twist, or having them love/hate an NPC (non-player character) is a real rush. It gives me tremendous pleasure when someone genuinely likes these stories, and lets me know.
Several readers have noticed that I used Estonian names for some of the characters (also Croatian, Mordvin, Lettigalian - and many others). I had already decided to include quite a few features which were obviously inspired or borrowed (okay, stolen) from Eastern Europe: guslars and druzhinas, as well as Hospodars, Bans, and Voivodes.
That was all part of a deliberate attempt to avoid a fantasy setting that would immediately look and sound like a rip-off of Vikings, or Anglo-Saxon England. Don't get me wrong: I love tales set in those eras. But there are plenty of those - I was aiming at something just a little bit different.
Thank you all for your support and kind comments. That's why I publish my stories on Literotica - and will continue to do so, for the foreseeable future.
I'll add a few unnecessary words here, because the Literotica editors won't accept a story with less than 750 of them. I don't blame them for that policy; it just makes it difficult to slip in a cast of characters ... which is why I'm shamelessly padding this one.
Apologies to Laurel & Manu and their editors for causing them headaches with my formatting issues. Hope this one works.
Thanks again,
AspernEssling