489 Ingmar of Red Axe, Saxon Chieftain (NPC) - The atrocity against the Red Axe clan

Me and my younger brother with almost all of our warriors were at the court of my King Ælle in Sussex, it was 4 months after the death of my Father near York but life was none the less good, my young son who had been sickly for the five years since his birth (during which his mother, my wife died) was for the first time hale and hearty, my younger brother had found a young bride who we had left back at the village and who was looking after my son and it seemed was pregnant with my brothers first (although she barely showed it) and the negotiations with the Silchester Knight Sir Dalan for the return of his follower were proceeding satisfactorily if rather slowly.

We had received reports that a raiding party from Silchester had been operating for some days in our lands but our skirmishing parties had always arrived hours too late to catch them before the trail went cold again, finally however they had been spotted moving at a reckless pace with out fear of detection especially accounting for the slaves and cattle they had captured and that they were moving straight towards my kings stronghold where we were garrisoned, Erda surely was smiling upon us.

When they saw our warriors arrayed against them they turned and fled into the forest leaving many of the slaves and booty they had captured behind, this combined with a small party they had left behind helped to prevent us capturing the main body, however our force followed the raid deep into Silchester and as far as King Ælle was concerned more than revenged their raid, however that is another tale for others tell.

Because whilst I was chasing them down I happened to recognise one of the slaves that they had left behind as one of my own that I had captured whilst raiding in Silchester 7 summers past, I knew then that my village had been raided and me, my brother and our men immediately set off for home, hoping against hope that it had only been a simple hit and run.

As we approached however we saw the smoke from the still smouldering buildings from many miles away, when we got there all was death, virtually all the men had been killed and many of the women and children obviously cut down as they ran, my heart leaped however as it seemed that my son and sister-in-law where not one of the dead in the village for we could find no sign of their bodies, I hoped that they had been one of the few to ran away in time from the carnage as had a few other that were only now returning from neighbouring villages, hearing that we had returned. It was 3 days latter and virtually all had been accounted for either having been spared or been consumed by the funeral pyre, when the bodies of my son and my brother’s wife were discovered in the woods, it would appear that they had been deliberately targeted, taken into the words when who knows what violations had been performed upon them before they been held down and their throats cut, they had not even been spared and taken as slaves.

The survivors told us who the leaders of the expedition had been, none other than Sir Dalan, Sir Evan and Sir Gorvannon, as the flames consumed the bodies of my only son and of my brother’s wife, we there and then swore our family to vengeance against those responsible for this outrage.