Arc’s first memory is of a short gnarled man’s wrinkled face hovering several feet above his own as he lay uncomfortably on a dirt road. His back lay half in the dirt and half on something smooth and solid. He was 10 and had no idea where he was or how he’d got there. The man turned out to be a village elder. And, the village turned out to be Carseca.
As he was helped to his feet, a giant ornate hunting bow was revealed. The bow his only connection to his past. Did he steal it? Or, was the bow an artifact of another life in another place? Arc was raised by the proprietor of the village crèche. He could not help but notice how he did not look like the other kids or any of the adults for that matter. Where their skin was tanned, his was light. Their eyes were dark, his were bright. His hair was the only similarity and even his hair tended was universally darker black then any of his peers.
He wondered where the children went after classes and work every day and never understood the concept of family. No one ever told him what to do, except when it was a task to be completed for the village. As he grew older, he volunteered for every task as long as it took him into the desert. Soon, he began spending all his time in the desert, task or no. He hunted for himself and the village, trained with his bow, and pondered existence.
Arc became a man and Carseca began to try and reel him in. Elders chastised him for not spending more time giving back to the village and tasked him with frivolous endeavors until he began to resent them. He began to resent anyone telling him what to do or when to do it. Still, the only tasks he took to with relish were those that brought him to what he now considered his true home, the desert.
One day while hunting a particularly elusive mountain lion, he stumbled upon an old cavern freshly revealed by a dust storm. After tracking the lion to its den, Arc returned to the mysterious cavern. He flushed out a giant scorpion leaving it slain at the entrance, so the day would not end empty-handed. Assaulted by the stench of corruption entering the cavern, Arc found bones piled knee high. By the light of the setting sun angling through the cavern entrance, something glinted beneath the fetid pile.
It was there he discovered the two Kukri (lengthy curved daggers) their edges still wickedly sharp. But, it was not the daggers themselves that would change his future forever, but instead the inscription on the blades. One reads, “Arconis Be Free.” The other, “Arconis The Time is Now.” So it was when Arc returned to Carseca and saw the strangers passing through, that he knew that it was time to leave. In truth, when he looked inward he had felt the call to leave for a long time. Who was he? How had he ended up in Carseca? And, most pressing, who had left him this message?