“You want to learn about Kiina S’Garr, do you? Well, pull up a chair, because this is a bit of a long story. Oh, and could you call the barmaid for some more wine? If you want me to talk, then I need to moisten my throat first.
Allright. Kiina S’Garr was born some thirty years ago as the daughter of a Tokian hunter. She received her first axe at the age of ten, as is customary to those folks. They hunt murvelbeasts, you see, and they need axes to crack through their thick skulls. I hear she killed her first one at the tender age of twelve using nothing but a rock, but you can’t really be sure if such stories are true, now can you? There are many rumors circulating about this girl, and I’m only telling you what others have told me.
Anyway, the Tokians were conquered, or civilized as you might put it, when Kiina was fifteen years old. Her parents, Lono and Stregi S’Garr I believe they were called, were both killed in an uprising against their new masters the following year. Her village, Gillier Saban, became subject of a punitive expedition. The hovels were burned, and the barbarians living in them were taken as slaves. But Kiina took offence to that, so she ripped the axe from the hands of one of the phalangists, and split his head in two, helmet and all. One of the prefects, by the name of Görax Arsaces, was so amused by this that he took her and put her in his personal guard.
Yes, it’s not uncommon for officers of the northern front to use barbarians as bodyguards. They don’t trust their countrymen, and who can blame them, really?
Kiina probably realized that being the servant of a prefect was better than being sold off and ending up in an imperial brothel somewhere in the Western Fringe, so she stuck by the prefect’s side for ten years, warding off assassins and murvelbeasts alike. Shortly after the subjugation of the Tokians the Northern Army, along with Kiina and her master, was sent on the campaign through the Histic Empire in the west. Kiina learned quite a lot there. She studied the tactics and the stratagems of the imperial army intensely, and sort of ended up as a mitlitary advisor to Arsaces.
It’s not hard to imagine that he took a fancy to her, seeing as she was made head of the guard, and was given a fancy suit of armour, paid out of the prefect’s own pocket.
Anyway, Arsaces took a Histic arrow to the throat at the siege of Galta. His bodyguard was, naturally, disbanded, and Kiina traveled back to Tokia. But not to take the profession of a hunter again, no, she had other plans. Somehow she managed to form a decently sized uprising in the Tokian capitol of Brishnak, with the help of some influential friends of her father. Murvelbeasthunters are pretty well respected up there, you know.
With the tactical know-how she had gathered in the campaigns she managed to lead her band of rebels to victory, and threw the Imperial governor out of the city, along with his city guard. Since then she’s been the head of the Tokian rebellion, or the S’Garr rebellion, as some people call it. Many Tokian tribes have rallied to her support over the years, and I hear she’s not far from being elected First Protector of Tokia by their nobles.
…
I saw her myself, you know. At the battle of Sollangen Bridge, just before my hand was sliced off by a Tokian swordsman. She certainly looked majestic, with the colours of her village around her legs, the Imperial armour protecting her head and breast, and the hide of a murvelbeast around her shoulders.
Oh, I’m begging your pardon, good sir! It seems I’ve gone on for hours, and I’ve drunk most of your wine, too. Let me buy you another drink, what did you say your name was?”
The last words of Arnos Vecepoax, retired soldier of the Fourteenth Imperial Phalanx, before his immediate execution by sergeant Vilex Sabrin of the Fitelian Urban Cohort. The crime was cited by sergeant Sabrin as insubordination and the spreading of subversive propaganda. No further investigation of the matter was conducted.
An Imperial phalangist
A Tokian murvelbeast
