Caliber: The Pilgrimage

Burned To Ashes

Caliber: The quality of someone's character or the level of someone's ability.

    The Village of Monks, A peaceful place. The Village of the Monks was a distance away from anything. The monks who originally settled there believed the isolation would protect them. Through out the years this notion had proven to be true. The only time the village had been under any real danger was during the Orc Wars, but those days had passed long ago. The village now was just a village of Monks, Farmers, and Orphans.

    As they did every week the Monks were teaching the Orphans how to farm the land. The older generation of farms was cast out if they reached the age of thirty. They would be sent on a pilgrimage that took them through the mountain of the Orcs, through the Elven Forest, and finally to the Kingdom of Norte, The Human Realm.

    If and when the individual returned from that pilgrimage they would be accepted as a monk. This had happened many times through out the years. According to the monks the idea of the pilgrimage was to show the individual how the rest of the world was, giving them an opportunity to decided wether or not they wanted to be a part of it. Those who survived the pilgrimage usually chose to return. The others usually died.

    The village had an interesting design. From the start it was supposed to be an isometric village. In the middle of the village there was a fountain that had taken almost a decade to actually build after the monks first settled. The rest of the buildings were built around the fountain. The purpose for the village being was isometric was to represent how imperfect humans were. No matter how hard a human tried to attain perfect it was impossible. And the monks believed this was proven because however perfect the buildings were from the outside the inside of the buildings were always different.

    The bath houses were next to the fountains. And from there the village spread out for about a mile. Most of the housing was spread out on the north side of the village. The Mess Hall and farms were down by the south. The well was also on the North side.

    The well was a place of magic for the Monks. It was said that the first orphans allowed to enter the village when it was first founded had died at the well. Jack and Jill were the names of the orphans. They had gone to get some water late one night, they went alone which the monks told them to never do, and they were found dead the next day. When the monks found them they were holding each other very closely. The monks tried to separate the orphans bodies but they would not move. Eventually they buried the bodies where the farms would one day be. The monks praised god for giving them the life of Jack and Jill to further service them by giving them a plentiful harvest.

    The well to the newer orphans had just become a place to hunt beetles that came around to find water. Or more often than not the beetles came for an orphan that it could drag away to its nest injecting him or her full of her eggs to eat him from the inside out. The monks were always telling the kids to be wary when they would go to the well to collect water. Because it was a mile away from the village their screams for help would usually go unheard.

    In the village there was also a assembly hall where the monks would gather the orphans for their nightly prayer time. Usually during the prayer time their was always a one or two orphans that bailed out.

    One of them was Lex. He never really believed in the god the monks always prayed to. While it was time for the nightly prayer he usually bailed to the well. He usually invited Raven to come along with him. Raven was a dark haired silent girl who didn't care much for the thought of god. She didn't claim for him not to exist but he just didn't seem real, god that is. Lex was the same way he was an individual who preferred to keep to himself. His hair was just as dark as Ravens but unlike her his skin was much darker.