Served after illness, childbirth, or exhaustion when the spirit needed warmth.
A nourishing bowl of nettle and hazelnut soup, symbolizing healing and warmth.
Nettles have been used since the Stone Age for medicine and food. High in iron and vitamins, they were one of the first wild greens to appear after winter. Hazelnuts, foraged in autumn and stored carefully, added fat and flavour. Together, they formed a healing brew simple, sacred, and powerful.
This soup was often made by elders or midwives and shared with the tribe’s wounded or recovering members. In StormborneLore, it’s the first meal given to a tribe member returning from exile.
A close-up of crushed hazelnuts surrounded by fresh nettle leaves, essential ingredients for a traditional healing soup.
🧾 Ingredients (Modern Adaptation) Ingredient Qty Est. Cost (UK) Fresh nettle leaves (or spinach) 100g £0.00–£1.00 (free if foraged) Hazelnuts (crushed or ground) 50g £0.50–£1.00 Onion (or wild leek) ½ small £0.10 Water or light stock 500ml ~£0.10 Salt (optional) to taste <£0.05 Oil or fat (optional) 1 tsp £0.05
Estimated total cost: £0.80 – £2.30 (Serves 2 — approx. £0.40–£1.15 per bowl)
Fresh ingredients for a healing nettle soup, including hazelnuts, onion, and green herbs.
Boil water with foraged nettles, leeks, and crushed hazelnuts in a clay pot over fire.
Stir with a carved stick until it thickens.
Serve hot with flatbread or root mash.
Modern method:
Wash nettles (use gloves!) or spinach.
Sauté onion in oil until soft.
Add water/stock, nettles, and crushed hazelnuts.
Simmer 10–15 minutes. Blend for smoothness or serve rustic.
Season lightly. Optional: add oat milk or cream for richness.
📖 Suggested Story Pairing Serve with: “The Fire Within the Child” moments of recovery and resilience.
This is a soup of healing, strength, and memory. One bowl could mark the difference between fading and fighting. One fire-lit meal could carry the spirit through another night.
Tairneanach and Pendragon Spirits of Storm, Fire, and Fate
A vibrant illustration of Tairneanach, the Storm Dragon, embodying the elements of fury and prophecy amidst a colorful backdrop.
The Storm That Watches
They say a great wyrm once roamed Biddulph Moor. A beast of smoke and sky, hunted by men with spears of bronze and fear in their bellies. But no man killed it.
The creature rose into the thunderclouds and vanished, taking the storm with it.
The next day, nothing grew on the moor but blackened heather.
That wyrm became Tairneanach, the Storm Dragon not a creature of fire, but of prophecy. His breath is wind. His scales shimmer like wet slate. He is the first when a child is born under an omen sky. The last to vanish when a soul is cast out unjustly.
“He is not tamed. Not ridden. He chooses.” Whispered in the dreams of outcasts and seers.
He spoke once to Taranis, though none saw him but the moon. And ever since, storms gather when the boy is near.
Pendragon the King of the First Flame.
Before the first stone stood upright, before wolves wore names, there was Pendragon the Flame Father. He does not fly in the sky, but in the bloodline of heroes.
His heart is fire, but his wisdom is older than heat. Some say he shaped the bones of the land. Others say he waits beneath the earth, dreaming.
He is the King of Dragons, but he does not rule — he remembers.
Pendragon comes not in rage, but in reckoning. When a soul is weighed against fate itself, he is the one who tips the scale. He appeared in the old hills beyond Cannock. Curled in flame and sorrow when the first chieftain died protecting a starving tribe. That fire still burns in the soil.
The Blood Oath of the Stormborne It is said the Stormborne line carries both marks:
The Eye of Tairneanach
vision, fury, and unnatural storms
The Flame of Pendragon
mercy, fire, and legacy
Taranis bears both. He is not just watched by dragons he is of them.
Tairneanach: Name derived from Irish/Scottish Gaelic tairneanach meaning “thunder.”
Pendragon: Traditional Welsh/British title, here re-imagined as the Flame Father, not a king by rule but by spirit.
I was the name they would not say, The thirteenth son they gave away. Born too late, with skies in veins, A storm that whispered through their shame.
They blessed the first, they praised the strong, Each brother’s place in tribal song. But I a hush, a trembling glance, A question wrapped in circumstance.
I healed the bird. They saw a curse. They watched me rise, then feared me worse.
A child of feather, flame, and thread A boy who woke what should be dead.
I bore no crown, but bore the cost. Of every death, of every loss. Too small for war, too young for blame, Yet still I walked through fire and name.
Exiled not for deed, but fear. No grave was mine, no cradle near. Yet wolves have eyes where men have blind, And storms remember those they find.
So let the bards forget my face. Let time erase the tribal place. For fire burns but does not beg And storms are born on broken legs.
Cover of ‘The Chronicles of Taranis’ featuring intricate patterns and vibrant colors.
A poem from the whispers of the forest after Taranis saves the she-wolf and her pups.
They say the storm once walked alone, Through fire’s breath and forests blown. A child of exile, ash, and flame, Who bore no crown, yet earned his name.
He found her there the mother torn, Her belly bruised, her breath still warm. The hunters laughed. The kindling caught. But mercy moved where rage was taught.
The wolves rose first with fang and howl. Then he, with eyes that shook the boughs. Through smoke he tore the yew’s black roots, And bore her forth with bloodied boots.
The fire danced. The forest burned. But in the blaze, a legend turned. Three pups were born from soot and sky, And none who watched tell you why.
One bore lightning on its spine, One with eyes of gold, divine. And one was pale as ghostly thread The fire not fled, but burned instead.
Now whisperers call him Storm fire still, The boy who chose not rage but will. Who fed the flame and spared the beast, And from that night, the howls increased.
We saw him first when the moon stood still, A shadow-thing, a shiver, a will. No fur for warmth, no tribe for name, Just eyes of storm and bones of flame.
He crouched beneath the hollow tree, Where roots like fingers held memory. A blade of flint. A soul unmade. Too young for fate. Too old to fade.
We did not howl. We did not stir. We watched, as watchers always were. I bore my scar. He bore his own. Boldolph’s growl was soft as stone.
The forest paused to hear his breath. A child-shaped echo of life and death. No fear in him. No plea. No prayer. Only silence carved from despair.
He did not run. He did not speak. The pact was formed without the weak. A feather laid. A vow not sworn. Yet something old was newly born.
The trees remember. The stones still hum. The storm has teeth. The wild has come. And though we walk on paw and air, We saw the boy. And we were there.
my nose they maimed, For secrets whispered and magic named.
They feared the truth,
that dripped like rain, That power born in pain brings flame.
I bore no sword, I cast no stone, Yet still they cast me out alone. Bound and blind, I crossed the moor, With curses trailing like wolves at the door.
“Let the thirteenth child suffer my fate,” I spat through blood at the village gate. “Let every line remember me, When thunder walks and wolves run free.”
But still I mourn, though wrath was mine The babes I lost, the bloodline’s line. I gave the curse to stars and skies, Yet I too break when a child cries.
and fire for breath, He walks between day and the deepening night, A child of healing, a whisper of death.
They called him cursed, they called him flame, Yet none could deny the spark in his palm. He bore no weapon, he sought no fame But the winds bent low to kiss his calm.
When Drax lay broken, minds turned black, Taranis reached, and thunder wept. The fever fled, the soul came back And the child collapsed, as the forest slept.
Now they watch him with fearful eyes, This babe who speaks in ancient tongue.
Yet storms do not ask if the fire should rise… They rise because the world’s begun.
Colorful thank you note encouraging readers to like and subscribe, featuring a sunny landscape.
The punishment was isolation not exile, not quite. Taranis, though still only a babe by the tribe’s reckoning, was watched but not spoken to. No brothers played with him. No mother’s lullaby wrapped him in comfort. He was to be observed, not nurtured. Fed, but not spoken to. Cared for, but not loved.
It was said the elders feared what he would become. A child with glowing hands who healed a broken mind just as easily break others, they whispered.
And so, silence fell over him like a second skin.
But the boy the boy did not stop being hungry.
On the third day of his confinement, Taranis wandered just beyond the shadow of the chief’s hut. He was old enough to walk, too young to know danger. And he was hungry.
He saw berries.
They gleamed with dew, small and red like droplets of blood upon the brambles. They looked like the ones Nyx used to give him in summer. He plucked them, popped one in his mouth, and smiled.
Within minutes, the world tilted.
Taranis clutched his belly, his body shaking. His legs gave way as a cry tore from his throat not of pain alone, but of betrayal.
The world blurred. The air thickened. He vomited violently and collapsed into the underbrush.
From the edge of the village, Nyx saw the fall.
“FATHER!” she screamed, racing ahead before any guards stop her. “Taranis! Taranis!”
Conan came running, as did Lore and Boldolph, the great black wolf. Lore scooped the child into his arms, his skin already burning with fever again, his lips pale and trembling.
“What’s he done?” Lore cried.
“Berries,” said Morrigan softly from the tree line. “The bitter kind. Poisonous to children.”
Nyx was sobbing now, her hands over her mouth. “He didn’t know. He was hungry. He was hungry and no one fed him.”
Father turned to the elders, fury flashing in his eyes.
The elders said nothing.
That night, the laws were rewritten.
Taranis would not be left alone again. He would still be watched, still be studied but never again forgotten.
Because even a stormborn child needs more than destiny to survive.
My uncles and father stood within the sacred ring of fire. The smoke curling into the twilight sky as the elders sat in silence. Each wore the furs of their lineage, feathers braided with bone and bark, their eyes sharpened by decades of judgement. The fire crackled with unease not just heat, but the energy of something unseen, something stirring.
Father stood tall, one hand resting on the haft of his ceremonial spear. He was prepared not just as a warrior, or chief, but as a father. A father standing between his blood and the storm.
“Your son broke the sacred law,” spat Elder Bran, his voice like dry bark in winter. “He entered the hut of an ostracised man without escort. That law is older than your title, Chief Conan.”
“He must be punished,” added Elder Tarn, slamming his staff into the scorched earth. “Compassion does not absolve disobedience. Rules are not bent for favoured blood.”
A silence fell taut as a bowstring before Drax stepped ahead. Gaunt, but no longer wild, his words rang with clarity.
“He saved my life.”
Gasps and murmurs broke across the council. Even those who had long abandoned hope for Drax looked at him now with flickers of wonder, or wariness.
“I would be dead if not for him,” Drax continued. “I felt it something leave me. A darkness burned away. I am… clear.”
Lore moved to stand beside our father. “He is barely one year old,” he said. “Yet he speaks in tongues, walks like a hunter, and heals the broken with words no one taught him.”
“This is what troubles us!” snapped Elder Ysra, rising in her many-layered cloak of ash and iron charms. “Power like this does not come without price. The last child marked by the storm brought famine, flood, and war.”
“We do not know what mark he carries,” my father replied, eyes level. “But I will not see my son punished for compassion.”
Ysra stepped ahead, face drawn like flint. “It was not just compassion. It was prophecy in motion. And prophecy unguarded is wildfire in a dry forest.”
Behind them, Morrigan and Boldolph stood watch just beyond the fire’s reach. The black wolf growled low, a rumble of warning. while Morrigan’s gaze stayed fixed on the chief’s hut where Taranis slept, gripped by fever.
The fire hissed and popped. Somewhere nearby, a nightbird called.
Elder Bran raised his staff. “The child shall remain under close watch, isolated from others but housed within the chief’s care. He will be marked not as cursed, but as unknown. No more unsanctioned visits. If he breaches this again”
“We will not exile a babe,” my father growled.
“No,” said Ysra coldly. “But we may exile what grows inside him.”
The flames danced higher, wind tugging at the circle as if the fire spirits themselves had stirred.
Lore bowed his head slowly. “Then we shall walk the knife’s edge between reverence and fear. But mark my words if you turn on him too soon, you lose more than trust. You lose the only light left.”
As the council slowly dispersed, dusk settled like a shroud. The camp held its breath. Only the crackle of fire and the quiet steps of retreating warriors broke the silence.
Later, beneath the stars, young Nyx turned to our father. “So what happens now, Father?”
“Isolation. No one speaks to him unless permitted. He’ll be watched not as punishment, but out of fear. They don’t understand what he is. And people fear what they do not understand.”
“If we don’t talk to him… won’t that break him?”
Conan’s voice was low. “That is what I fear most.”
Just then, the elders returned with the boy. His fever had broken. Taranis walked unaided into the firelight, eyes drowsy but glowing faintly.
“What is going on?” Conan asked, rising quickly.
“He entered the eternal sleep,” Elder Ysra whispered. “But then… he came back.”
Even the fire seemed to pause.
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