Vaudun The Unspoken
The Warmage Who Never Finished His Spell
A Warmage of Bastok
When the Shadow Lord's armies marched on the Republic, Bastok sent its warmages to hold the marshes north of the city. Vaudun was one of the best of them: a quiet Hume from the Mines who wrote every spell he knew into a single leather-bound book, and who never let anyone else carry it.
His company remembered him for his odd courtesies. He answered every man in the tongue he was spoken to, and he never lost an argument to a man who kept repeating himself. He could sleep through a bombardment, yet the first syllable of a spell woke him, even the chaplains' prayers over the wounded. And he wore two knives that nobody ever saw him draw, until the last night.
The Spell That Never Closed
On the last night of the siege, with the Quadav pouring out of Beadeaux and the line breaking around him, Vaudun opened his book to its final page and began the working meant to seal the marsh behind the retreating army. Those who saw it say the rain stopped falling where he stood.
He never finished it. A crystal shell burst at his feet, and its shards took root in the left side of his face, growing over his eye and into his jaw while the words were still in his mouth. The last page was torn from the book and lost in the mud. The army got away that night. Vaudun was listed among the dead.
What Walks the Marsh
Twenty years later, a man in a burnt Bastokan coat walks Pashhow Marshlands with his head bowed, searching the ground. He does not answer when called, and travelers pass him every day without so much as a glance in return.
Those who have cast a spell near him tell it differently. They say the working he began is still open inside him, and that it listens. They say he is courteous still, in his way, and always answers in kind. And the marsh folk say that if you ever hear him reach the last line, you had better hope the spell has nothing left to say.