He who feeds the fire, heals the wounded, and watches when others sleep.
“The hearth remembers what the sword forgets.” — Solaris
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Loyalty Forged in Fire
Once a prisoner of war and former member of the Black Claw clan. Solaris now stands at the heart of Emberhelm. Not as a warrior, though he is one but as its Flame keeper.
Bound by fate and fire to Taranis Stormborne. Solaris is both servant and sage, a man who turned from chains to purpose.
He answers to no tribe but the one that gave him back his name.
Keeper of the Hearth, Bearer of the Flame.
Solaris tends the ancient hearth of Emberhelm. Where fire is not just warmth it is memory, ritual, and shield. He is the first to rise, the last to sleep. The quiet strength behind every campaign, ceremony, and storm-weathered return.
He knows the secret songs that coax flame from damp wood. He prepares meals that bind warriors like kin. He chants the old rites before a journey and the healing incantations after a battle.
They call him Flame keeper. They forget he once fought in the pits.
A Warrior’s Past, A Healer’s Hands
Beneath the linen and ash, Solaris is built like stone. He was trained in combat from childhood both in brutal close quarters and ritual duels. Though now he wields ladles and herbs more than blades. Make no mistake: Solaris can kill as easily as he can cure.
But he chooses mercy. And that, say some, is his greatest strength.
A Father First
Solaris is father to four children, born of hardship and hope. Two serve in the Emberhelm guard. One studies under Lore as a flame-reader. The youngest is said to speak to animals, though Solaris smiles and says nothing when asked.
His love for them is quiet but endless. They are the reason he never leaves Emberhelm’s walls unless the need is dire.
Master of Fire and Flesh
In the temples of the old clans, Solaris learned to read flame patterns. Mix healing salves, and call upon the Ember Breath a rite known to few and respected by all.
His knowledge of ancient remedies is unmatched. Some say he can slow a fever with a whisper. Others, that his fire never burns without reason.
✴️ Known As: The Flame keeper of Emberhelm
He Who Stills the Fire
The Ash-Hearth Watcher
Blood Brother to Taranis
Father of Four Flames
🏠 His Place in the Realm Residence: Emberhelm, Caernath
Allegiance: Taranis Stormborne
Role: Hearth guardian, healer, cook, and flame ritualist
Weapon of Choice (if needed): Iron cooking knife, hooked staff, bare fists
Title: Lord Commander of the Stormborne Realm: Shadowmere, Bronze Age frontier of rivers and stone Brother to: High Warlord Taranis and Lore, the Flamebearer
Character Bio:
Drax Stormborne is the iron heart of the Stormborne resistance a battle-scarred warrior whose silence weighs more than words.
Where Taranis commands with the fury of the storm and Lore with the wisdom of the ancients. Drax rules the battlefield with unwavering precision and primal force.
Raised in the shadow of his brother’s exile, Drax carved his loyalty in blood and fire. When the Clawclan advanced on the borders of Caernath. It was Drax who held the line, forging discipline into the ragged ranks of Stormborne fighters.
His realm, Shadowmere, is wild and watchful a land of rivers, woods, and ancient circles. where warriors learn to move like ghosts and strike like thunder.
Clad in furs and iron, adorned with war tattoos and scars that speak of countless battles. Drax is a living symbol of Stormborne resolve. Though his voice is rare, his presence speaks volumes protector, strategist, brother. His loyalty to Taranis is absolute, and his trust in Lore is forged through fire.
Some call him the Wolf of Shadowmere. Others, the Axe of Emberhelm. All know one truth: Drax does not retreat.
The sky over Rykar’s Ridge cracked with a sound like splitting stone.
Pendragon rose first wings stretched wide. Vast as storm sails, his bronze and emerald scales catching the last light of day. He circled high above the valley, a gleaming sovereign watching the armies assemble below.
To the west, the last kin of Stormborne gathered. Taranis stood at the forefront, grey-eyed and grave, flanked by Lore and Drax. The ground at their backs was scorched from the fire of prophecy.
To the east, under curling black clouds, came the dragon of thunder Tairneanach, black as midnight and crowned with sparks. Lightning licked his flanks. His eyes were coals, ancient and furious.
He was the dragon of reckoning, storm-forged and prophecy-bound, the one who watched from the shadows of time.
But this was no duel between beasts alone.
It was the end of an age. And dragons, it was said, chose sides not by blood — but by truth.
Taranis looked to the sky. “They’ve returned,” he said softly.
Drax scoffed. “Or come to see who burns first.”
“Dragons don’t come for sport,” Lore murmured, hand resting on the carved staff of flamewood. “They come when destiny wavers.”
The wind shifted.
Down came Pendragon, his great claws curling into the soil beside Taranis. His gaze fell on the young warlord no longer the exiled child of the woods. But a leader draped in fire-scars and ash-braided hair. Pendragon gave a low, resonant growl. Not a threat. A vow.
And across the field, Tairneanach descended like a storm himself, cracking trees and stone beneath his wingspan. His breath steamed in the air heavy with ozone. Thunder rolled in his chest.
They faced each other now: two titans born before men stood upright. Two dragons of the Stormborne prophecy.
The wind stilled.
And in that silence, Morrigan lifted her howl to the sky a signal from the ridge behind. Boldolph stood beside her in wolfman form, snarling low.
The Clawclan were moving.
“DRAX!” Taranis barked. “Hold the eastern rise!”
Drax nodded, slamming his axe against his shield. “With pleasure.”
“LORE!” he turned, voice like thunder. “Prepare the flame line. If the dragons fall—”
“They won’t,” Lore cut in, eyes glowing faintly. “But I’ll be ready.”
The Clawclan came screaming from the ridge like hornets. Painted in black and red, bone charms rattling, fire arrows loosed high. The first line met Drax’s warriors in a clash of metal, blood, and grit.
Behind them, the Stormborne shield-wall held fast. But the pressure built like a coming flood.
Pendragon roared, rearing high. With one beat of his wings, he swept fire over the Clawclan’s flank .flames so hot they melted shields anoʻd seared the earth itself. Men screamed, scattered, and fell.
But then, a second roar answered.
Tairneanach unleashed his storm.
Lightning struck the centre of the field, ripping through both earth and sky. The power coursed through bones, hearts, even memory. Clawclan warriors staggered but so did some of Stormborne’s own.
The dragons circled each other, neither striking first.
Not yet.
Amid the chaos, a boy barely of age charged toward Taranis blade too large for his arms. Face painted in fear and madness.
Taranis met him not with fury, but with mercy.
He turned the blade aside, struck the hilt, and knocked the boy unconscious.
“There’s no glory in slaying the broken,” he muttered.
A moment later, Boldolph leapt past him slamming into a Clawclan berserker with enough force to crack ribs. Morrigan followed, her white fur streaked with blood and soot, her teeth finding the throat of another.
Still the dragons circled.
Still the battle burned.
And then..
Pendragon dipped low. Not toward Tairneanach, but toward the battlefield.
A new force had emerged from the mists a second wave of Clawclan. armed with net-traps and dragon-piercing spears forged from meteoric ore.
“Cowards,” Lore hissed. “They seek to slay the sacred.”
Tairneanach landed with a thunderous quake.
He did not aid the Clawclan.
He turned against them.
His tail swept wide, sending a dozen spearmen flying. His mouth opened — but instead of lightning, he loosed a scream of pure rage.
Pendragon landed beside him, and for a moment. the two dragons stood back to back defending not sides, but something older.
Stormborne. Balance. Prophecy.
The brothers saw it too.
Taranis, Lore, Drax covered in blood and smoke turned toward the dragons now defending their people.
And Taranis whispered, “It was never a battle between them.”
“No,” said Lore. “It’s a battle for us.”
“For Stormborne,” Drax added, gripping his weapon.
Tairneanach raised his head, and with a final, sky-splitting roar, flew straight into the blackened clouds above. Pendragon followed, spiralling upward.
Together, they vanished into the storm.
And on the ridge below, the Stormborne warriors stood not victorious, but awakened.
The sky split again.
This time, it was not Tairneanach who screamed across the clouds, but Pendragon, rising high and circling above the valley. Beneath him, the Black Clawclan surged ahead like a tide of locusts. War cries rang out. Spears glinted. Shields slammed together in rhythm.
But at the front of the Stormborne line stood Taranis unmoved, massive, his blade held sideways like it weighed nothing.
Beside him, Boldolph roared half-man, half-wolf, his red eyes glowing. He slammed the butt of his axe into the ground and bared his teeth.
Behind them, Lore raised his staff. “Now!” he cried.
The runes carved into the ancient stones shimmered. The hill beneath the enemy’s feet cracked as though the land itself rejected their presence.
Drax, bloodied from an earlier clash, stood on a higher ridge, calling the warriors into formation. “Spears up! Hold the line! If we fall today, the fire dies with us!”
The dragons descended.
Pendragon spiralled downward, a comet of colour and fury. He opened his mouth and from it came not just fire, but a heat so intense it twisted the air. The Clawclan’s front ranks scattered as tents and timber exploded into flame.
From the west, Tairneanach swooped low and screamed. a bolt of lightning leapt from his jaws and struck the enemy catapult, reducing it to smouldering splinters.
“DRAGONS!” a terrified voice cried. “The legends were true!”
The battlefield was chaos.
Taranis leapt into the fray, his sword catching fire as Pendragon soared above. With every swing, a foe fell not just cut down, but shattered. It was as if the storm had learned to walk.
Boldolph tore through the lines like a shadow of vengeance. He moved low and fast, clawing one man across the chest. Slamming another with his shoulder so hard the man flew ten feet.
The brothers fought in unison, their bond forged through exile and pain.
Lore, standing at the sacred cairn, whispered ancient words. Roots erupted from the ground, tangling the Clawclan’s feet. A tree burst through the soil like a spear, skewering a line of advancing warriors.
Still they came.
From the far end of the field rode their leader a brute named Gaedrix. cloaked in bone armour and wielding twin axes carved from dragon tooth.
He bellowed a challenge.
Taranis turned. His sword burned brighter. “This ends now.”
They met in the centre of the field the High Warlord and the Bone King.
Steel clashed. Sparks flew. The ground cracked beneath their boots. Gaedrix struck wild, savage, unrelenting. But Taranis moved like wind and thunder blocking, dodging, answering with devastating power.
One swing he broke Gaedrix’s left axe.
Another he knocked the warlord to one knee.
The Bone King snarled, blood spraying from his lips. “You should’ve stayed dead, Stormborne.”
Taranis drove his blade into the ground beside him, stepped forward, and cracked Gaedrix across the jaw with his gauntlet.
“I don’t die,” he said.
Then, as the dragons roared overhead and the warriors of Stormborne shouted in unison. Taranis lifted Gaedrix above his head and hurled him toward the burning ridge.
He never rose again.
Silence swept the field.
The remaining Black Claw warriors, seeing their leader defeated, dropped their weapons. Some fled. Others dropped to their knees.
The sky cleared.
Pendragon circled once before landing beside Taranis. The great beast bowed his head, his flank marked by a shallow gash but his eyes burning bright.
Tairneanach landed beside Boldolph, nudging the wolf-man with a low, throaty growl.
Drax limped forward, laughing through the pain. “You’ve always been dramatic.”
Taranis sheathed his sword and looked around at the wreckage, the blood, the fire.
“We were born of storm,” he said. “But we survive through each other.”
Lore joined them, hand resting on the cairn stone. “The old ways live.”
From the cliffs above, children and elders peeked out watching, hoping.
Taranis turned and called, “We are Stormborne! This is your land. Your fire. Your home!”
Cheers broke like thunder across the valley.
Boldolph threw his head back and howled. Morrigan’s answering cry echoed from the woods. The wolves had returned.
Above them, the two dragons fire and storm crossed paths in the sky.
A new age had begun. The prophesy come true. Tairneanach landed near Taranis allowing Taranis to climb his back.
“I’m not the ball I’m the dragon rider ” Taranis smirked chuckling as he swooped up into the sky.
but it gave me no answer, Just the echo of paws in the frost-bitten heather. I searched for your scent in the whispering rain, Through bones of the hills and the breath of the plain.
We were fire and fang, you and I, Bound by curse, by claw, by sky. You ran ahead white flash through trees While I remained, dragged down by knees.
I saw you in dreams where no man treads, Where wolves wear crowns and ghosts break bread. Morrigan, my moon-heart, do you still roam The hollowed-out places we once called home?
I would trade my strength, my storm-wrought hand, For one more touch, for one command. To run beside you beneath the stars, Free of these chains, these cursed scars.
But if fate is cruel and time is blind, I’ll wait through seasons undefined. For love like ours does not decay It howls, it hunts, it finds a way.
The mists rolled thick across the highland of Staffordshire, curling like ghost fingers over rock and root. Beneath their shifting veil stood a figure that did not belong to the world of men not entirely. He was massive, broad-shouldered, with the raw frame of a warrior and the head of a beast. His fur was obsidian black, streaked with silver scars and ash.
Red eyes burned beneath his brow. His breath came out in steam as if the forge fire lived in his lungs.
Boldolph.
The wolf-man. The cursed one. The guardian of the Stormborne line.
That morning, he had awoken not as man, nor wholly beast, but as something sacred. Taranis had spoken only two words to him before the sunrise: “It begins.”
And now he stood at the edge of Rykar’s Field, muscles tensed, waiting for the signal.
Bronze glinted on the hilltop warriors from the Black Clawclan had gathered in force, armed with spears and teeth alike. Raiders, born of bloodlust, who left villages razed and children buried beneath burnt thatch.
A low growl rumbled in Boldolph’s throat.
Today, they would be stopped.
Below him, the Stormborne forces gathered. Taranis on the ridge with Pendragon and Tairneanach perched behind him.
, Lore chanting beside a fire that would not die. Drax tightening his bracers, muttering curses and prayers as one. Among the warriors stood farmers, hunters, fire-callers, bone-weavers all who had chosen to rise.
But none were like Boldolph.
He crouched low, the carved bronze blade strapped to his back. humming faintly forged by Drax, blessed by Lore, named Ashsplitter. His claws, though not natural, were tipped in obsidian. His howls call Morrigan from the far trees and silence men’s hearts.
And when the horn blew, he moved like a shadow torn free of the dark.
He crashed into the enemy line like a storm of fang and bronze. The first man he struck did not even scream just fell, bones splintered beneath the weight of the blow. Boldolph spun, slashed, roared, tore. Blood hit the grass like spilled wine.
The Black Clawclan were fierce but they were not ready.
“By the ancestors!” one shouted, staring in horror. “A beast walks!”
A spear was hurled. Boldolph caught it midair, snapped the shaft, and flung it back. It pierced armor and flesh. The man fell.
He was not alone.
From the trees came Morrigan white and wraithlike, her eyes alight with moonfire. Together, they circled the enemy, not as humans, not as animals but as something other. Something older.
Across the field, Taranis raised his sword high.
“For every child taken,” he shouted, “for every flame snuffed out WE RISE!”
The Stormborne charged. Bronze clashed with bronze. Flesh tore. Voices sang the old war cries.
Boldolph didn’t hear them. He was lost to instinct now the heartbeat of the land pounding in his ears. His claws met bone. His teeth found leather and neck. He leapt and rolled and dove through fire.
A warrior came at him with twin blades, marked in red clay and hate. Boldolph let him come. At the last second, he dropped low, sprang upward, and slammed both fists into the man’s chest. The impact shattered ribs and silence.
Then came the Champion.
Tall, scarred, wrapped in tattoos of wolf skulls. He grinned as he strode ahead, axe glinting.
“You’re no god,” the Champion sneered. “Just a cursed mutt.”
Boldolph stood, blood dripping from his chin.
“I am neither,” he growled, “but you will kneel before this mutt.”
They clashed.
Steel to fang. Roar to warcry. The battle stilled around them as the two titans fought. Blades rang. Earth shook. Bones cracked.
At last, Boldolph caught the Champion’s axe arm, twisted and snapped it. With a howl, he drove the dagger into the man’s chest.
Silence.
Then the howl.
Long. Ancient. Reverberating through stone, marrow, memory.
After the battle, the field was quiet.
The dead lay in solemn rows, the fires lit to honor their spirits. Taranis stood at the center, cloak torn, eyes fierce. Lore marked the ground with runes of ash. Drax drank in silence.
And Boldolph… sat alone beneath a tree.
His fur was streaked with blood. His eyes no longer burned they watched the stars. Morrigan lay beside him, her white coat stained with battle.
A small child approached. Her face was smudged with soot. Her eyes, wide with awe.
“Are you a monster?” she asked.
Boldolph tilted his head.
“No,” he said softly. “I am what protects you from monsters.”
She sat beside him.
In that moment with the fire crackling, and the dead honored. the Stormborne still alive Boldolph, the cursed wolf-man, found peace.
The fire had long gone out, and the cold crept in like a snake through the underbrush. Taranis sat with his back to a stone outcrop, shivering in silence. His breath came in misted gasps, though he dared not build another fire. Fire drew eyes. And eyes mean death.
He was only nine winters old skin and bones beneath a damp wolf-pelt, alone since exile. Alone… or so he believed.
Until that night.
A low growl rolled from the darkness.
Taranis reached for his stick-spear crude, splintered, tipped with flint and rose to a crouch. The growl came again, closer. Deep. Measured. Not hunger. Not rage. Warning.
The trees parted.
A shadow, massive and black, emerged from the mist.
The wolf.
Not just any wolf this one had eyes like embered blood. A scar down his left side that caught the moonlight. He have snapped Taranis in two.
But he didn’t.
Instead, the wolf circled once, then lay down, his tail wrapping around his legs. He did not blink. He just watched.
Taranis lowered his spear.
“You’re not here to eat me,” he said, voice hoarse from days without speech.
The wolf said nothing, but his ears twitched.
Taranis crept closer, sat back down beside the dying fire pit. He wrapped the pelt tighter and leaned ahead.
“I don’t know why they hate me,” he whispered.
The wolf’s eyes did not move.
“I saved my brother. I didn’t ask for the fire, or the storm. I just… did what I was told.”
Still the wolf said nothing, but his breathing was calm, deliberate like he was listening.
Taranis closed his eyes.
In the morning, he woke to warmth. Not from a fire, but from the wolf curled around him, sheltering him from the frost.
From that day onward, Boldolph never left his side.
He didn’t need to speak. His presence was enough. His strength, a shield. His silence, a vow.
Taranis never asked him why.
But deep down, he knew.
Boldolph had seen something in him not just a boy, not just a fire-starter. Something ancient. Something kin.
And Taranis, though still just a child, reached out and rested a hand on the wolf’s thick fur.
Spun flax with fire and softened seams. Mothers, warriors, whisperers, seers Their names echo across the years.
In caves they sang to unborn stars, In fields they carved the fate of wars. With calloused hands and iron hearts, They held the world while it fell apart.
They bore the weight of every dawn, Raised walls of stone when men were gone.
Healed with roots, and led with grace Stormborne blood, in every place.
Let no tale forget their worth, The quiet queens of ancient earth. For behind the sword and sky and lore, Were women holding open the door.
A vibrant illustration of Boldolph the black wolf howling at the moon. Embodying the mischievous spirit of the character from the poem.
(As sung by the kitchen fires)
Boldolph the black wolf sniffed the stew, His belly growled: “This meat will do!” He tiptoed past the snoring men, And dipped a paw in the broth again.
Morrigan caught him, gave a glare, “You thieving pup, don’t you dare!” But Boldolph smirked with sausage pride, And gobbled half the pot inside.
The cooks awoke to clatter and howl, The stew was gone, the bowl was foul. They found a trail of bones and crumbs, And one big wolf with sleepy gums.
Now every night the guards are warned, “Keep watch on Boldolph, ever adorned. For if you blink or turn your back, He’ll steal your soup and leave no snack!”
StormborneLore 