StormborneLore

Tag: Staffordshire Legends

  • Drax Stormborne: The Night of Hollow Fires

    Drax Stormborne: The Night of Hollow Fires

    Pennocrucium was dying.The fort that once rang with steel and Latin orders now lay quiet under a bruised evening sky. The last of the Roman banners hung in the wet like torn skin. The gold stitching dull and heavy with rain.

    Fires in the watchtowers had burned down to ash. Barracks stood open. Doors unbarred.No sentries.No horn.No empire.Drax stood in the centre of the courtyard, gloved hands behind his back, cloak dark with rain.

    He could still see where the eagle standard had stood, planted in the earth like a promise. He had bled beneath that symbol. Killed beneath it. Buried men beneath it.

    Defended it long after others began to whisper that Rome no longer had the strength to defend itself.Now the standard lay in the mud.He let out a slow breath.

    “This is how it ends,” he said quietly. “Not with fire. With retreat.”A few of his men were still with him. Not many. Veterans. The ones too loyal or too stubborn to walk away until ordered.

    “Praefect,” Maren said, stepping to his side. Rain had plastered the boy’s hair to his face, and his jaw worked the way it always did . When he was circling fear and pretending not to feel it. “The last wagons are packed. They’re taking the southern road to Viroconium before dark.”

    “Good,” Drax said. His voice stayed even. He didn’t look at his son. “They’ll be safer south.”Maren hesitated.

    “What about us? Us.Not the cohort. Not the banner. Us.” Drax let the word settle in his chest.

    “We’re not going south,” he said.Maren swallowed.

    “Are we going after them?”

    “No,” Drax said. “We’re going home.”The boy didn’t answer, but he understood. Drax saw it in the way the tension left his shoulders and something else took its place.

    Not ease. Something older. Something like hunger.Thunder rolled low over the Chase.Beyond the walls, the land lay open and dark. The tree line a ragged edge against a sky. That hadn’t decided yet if it meant to rain or break clear. Mist gathered low over the fields in pale bands.

    The air smelled of smoke from scattered farmsteads and peat fires. The smoke that drifted up on this night, every year, since before Rome ever named this place.

    Spirit night.Nos Galan Gaeaf.The first night of winter. Drax looked north, toward the low hills and the mist and the deep-breathing dark of the land that raised him.

    “Home,” he said.Then he walked into the new winter.

    © 2025 E. L. Hewitt / StormborneLore. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or reproduction of this work is prohibited.

    To read more about Drax please see The Chronicles of Drax

  • Taranis Stormborne: The Gathering Storm

    Taranis Stormborne: The Gathering Storm

    The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It came in thin veils that clung to the heather and the men’s cloaks. whispering through the birch like ghosts that had never left the Chase.

    Taranis knelt by the dying fire, sharpening the edge of his blade with slow, deliberate strokes. Each scrape of the stone was a prayer, though no priest would have known the words.

    “Water’s risin’, lord,” said Caedric, glancing toward the ford. “River’s near burstin’. We’ll not cross ‘fore dark.”

    Taranis looked up, eyes catching the faint shimmer of dawn through the fog. “Then we hold. The storm waits for no man, but we’ll not feed it needlessly.”

    A murmur ran through the men tired, hungry, but loyal. They’d followed him from the salt marshes to the high woods, and not one had broken yet.

    Byrin crouched beside him, rubbing at the scar along his jaw. “Word from the south. Roman riders out o’ Pennocrucium. A full cohort, maybe more. Marchin’ for the hill road.”

    Taranis’ mouth twitched at the name Pennocrucium,. The Roman word for Penkridge, though no Stormborne had spoken it without spitting since the fort was raised.

    “Let ‘em come,” he said quietly. “They’ll find nowt but mud, ghosts, and trees that whisper their names to the wind.”

    Caedric chuckled darkly. “Aye, an’ if the trees don’t get ‘em, we will.”

    They waited through the day as the rain thickened. Ravens wheeled low over the clearing, black against the iron sky.

    By nightfall, fires burned low and bellies growled. But Taranis was restless the unease that came before the breaking of something old.

    He walked to the ridge alone, where the land dipped toward the flooded ford. The air stank of wet earth and smoke from distant hearths.

    He spoke softly, almost to himself. “Once, this road ran to Rome. Now it runs to ruin.”

    A flash of lightning tore the sky open white veins across black clouds. In its light, he saw them: Roman scouts, three of them, creeping along the far bank, cloaks slick with rain.

    Taranis smiled grimly. “So, the eagle still claws at the storm.”

    By the time the thunder rolled, the first spear had already struck.

    The fight was over quick steel on steel, mud and breath, the hiss of rain on blood.

    When it was done, two Romans lay dead. The third crawling back toward the ford with half a helm and a broken arm.

    Taranis knelt beside him. “Tell your centurion,” he said, voice low, “Pennocrucium belongs to the storm now.”

    He rose, letting the rain wash his hands clean.

    Behind him, Byrin and Caedric watched, silent.

    “Yow reckon they’ll send more, lord?” Byrin asked.

    Taranis turned toward the woods. Where torches burned faint between the trees his men gathering, more arriving from the north and the marshes.

    “Aye,” he said, voice steady. “Let ‘em all come. Rome’ll find no peace ‘ere. Not while the storm still breathes.”

    The thunder rolled again, closer now, echoing through the Chase like an oath renewed. Somewhere in the distance, the old road cracked underfoot stone splitting where the spiral mark had been carved.

    The storm had woken.

    © 2025 E.L. Hewitt / StormborneLore. All rights reserved.

    Author’s Note:


    This chapter draws from the old Roman site of Pennocrucium (modern Penkridge), a key post along Watling Street. Local dialect echoes through “yow,” “nowt,” “lord” the living voice of the Black Country and Staffordshire’s borderlands. These stories honour the land itself where history and myth still meet in the rain.

    Formorestories on Taranis please see http://The prophecies and tales of Taranis

  • The Crone

    The Crone

    Written by

    emma.stormbornelore
    in

    The moon shone in the darkest of nights as I gathered the herbs.Around my cave herbs of healing yarrow and nettle being the most used by our clan.

    Only eight winters ago the leader of claw clan approached me. My son in custody I see him a bone chain around his neck.

    “What do you want Clun?” I asked the small balding man dressed in simple furs .

    “We promise no harm to the children,” said the tall man wrapped in makeshift coats. He thrust a small vial towards me “You’ll have your son by sunrise. Just brew a sleeping draft. Put Camp Utthar to sleep.”

    I hesitated. The chief of Utthar had been good to us took my family in when no one else would. But River was my son. My blood. My only hope my future what else I do?

    I nodded slowly but looked to my boy a sadness stirred in me. Ad i gathered berries, roots, sacred herbs and stirred them into the pot by firelight. That night, the warriors, the women, the children… all fell into deep, enchanted sleep.

    So deep was the sleep that no one stirred when the men of Clun entered the encampment. As The Clun men crept in silent as shadow, savage as flame.

    I watched from the trees as my eldest, Ryn, was dragged into camp forced to witness the massacre. His voice was broken when he turned to me:

    “What did you do, Mother?!”Ryn cried

    A silent attack killing women children and men who remained within the camp. Fifty men died that night warriors hunters their wives and children.

    “You promised you’d leave the children” I cried

    I was aware that utther wife had been taken to a local cave. A safe place where she would give birth when the time was right.

    “Foolish old lady, why would we leave our enemies children? When they will grow to seek vengeance” Clun smirked riding away

    I was left staring at the devastation . The next days passed and the Chief returned from battle, his warriors behind them. The chiefs horn was heard and his sons replied with the wolfs howl. But they ran with newborns in their arms Boldolph leading the charge.

    Time froze the wind stilled as boldolph approached his father

    “They came in the still of night no one would wake up. The claw killed all of then father and she helped” boldolph replied as if giving his report

    Suddenly the screams came

    “Take her! Bind her!” Raven shouted.
    “She betrayed the family! Everyone’s dead! Mother’s alive but in labour!”

    One of the wounded men pointed at me with blood on his chest.

    “We heard her whispering with the Clun.
    She brewed the sleeping draft… then brought death upon us.”

    I turned and ran wishing for cover ducking from branches and jumping over roots from trees. The sound of hounds barking after me my heart racing beating like the drums. The hounds found me first. The men were not far behind.

    They bound me in ropes and dragged me back to camp, fear pounding through my veins like war drums. Then he came…

    Boldolph stood at seven feet tall.
    “Let me have her,” he growled but his eyes softened when they found Morrigan, his wife, weeping with in a cave

    “Lox is dead she did it” morrigan said

    “We have her,” a man spat, dragging me by the hair.i screamed trying to fight against the men holding me

    The chieftain stood tall.

    “Whitehair, you have betrayed your tribe. Look around you. This is your doing you butchered them in their sleep.” The cheiftan said “Take her to the rocks. Strip her name. Cut her nose and tongue. Then bind her and take her far from here.”

    The punishment was swift.

    The curse came faster.

    Before they dragged me away, my final spell shattered the night:

    “May your line suffer,
    May your form twist,
    Until one born cursed by storms,
    Breaks the wheel with mercy and fire.”

    And then, the transformation.

    As I was dragged out I could hear the howls of pain and anguish from boldolph and his mate morrigan. as Boldolph the giant, and Morrigan the gentle, were torn from flesh and given fur. Wolves. Forever cursed.

    Later, bound and broken, I was dragged to the sacred stone. They beat me. Stripped me of sound. My nose. My tongue. My name.

    Blindfolded, I was taken to lands unknown far beyond the reach of kin or mercy.

    But my magic remains.
    So does the curse.
    And the storm is not yet done.

    I could still taste blood.

    The salt of my torn tongue. The copper of betrayal. The earth where they left me bound, blindfolded. my hands lashed with nettles so tightly i still bear scars decades later.

    They called it mercy.

    But mercy would have been death.

    Instead, they gave me exile: cast beyond the sacred stones with only the breath in my lungs. The curse they feared more than her voice.

    Ad i crawled for days dragging my broken body through marsh and thorn. Wolves circled but did not bite. Ravens flew overhead but did not cry. And the spirits… the spirits walked with me.
    I did not die i became something else.

    Something older than their laws.

    As i found shelter in the hollow of a tree once used by midwives. A place where blood had been spilled in both birth and death. There, pressed my palms to the bark, and for the first time in weeks, i did not feel pain.

    Only power.

    It rose from the roots. From the bones buried deep the old ones, the forgotten, the nameless. Their stories rushed into me like a storm tide.

    And over time i remembered my own name.

    Not the one they spat when they cursed me. Not the one the elders tore from the village scrolls.

    But the one my mother gave me beneath the silvery moon.

    “Cceridwyn,” whispered, mouth bleeding, lips cracked.

    As the Years passed more people feared me. As i walked among the bones now, barefoot and veiled. My form barely seen except by those on the edge of death or madness. Her tongue never healed. Her voice never returned. But her curse… her curse remained intact.

    And more potent than ever.

    For every 13th child born of her bloodline, a sign would come:
    A sickness no healer cure.
    Eyes the colour of stormlight.
    A voice that spoke truths no one taught.

    The 13th of the 13th would be the end or the beginning.

    She waits still.
    Her bones lighter now, her spirit heavier.
    Watching as the stories repeat,
    as her great-grandson walks into the same woods where she once crawled.

    Taranis.
    The boy with the storm in his chest.

    The one they tried to exile, like her.

    But this time…
    the storm remembers.

    © written and created by ELHewitt