TREVOR: ADDICTION

A Cautionary Tale About The Life and Times of Trevor The Half-Orc

The purpose of life is to survive. For some, that comes easy. For others, every day, every minute, every second is a struggle. Twenty three years ago, Trevor was abandoned as child. He never knew his mother or his father. He was half orc baby left in the streets to die-an aged old common story in Korvosa. But luckily for Trevor, some kind soul found the child and took him to the orphanage in the old district. He was given the greatest gift a being could ever have- the chance to survive. Life in the orphanage though was tough. It was packed, crowded, noisy and violent. At any given time, there must have been at 20-40 orphans-or varying races. The bedroom floor of the Orphanage smelled of urine since many children wet the bed and the only times the bed clothes were washed was when a new orphan took the bed. The floors were caked in dirt, and nobody ever took off their shoes (if they had any). Trevor, like most of the orphans mostly stayed in his own bed when he was there. To fill his time, he would throw a rock into the air and catch it over and over again. Violence was never far away though. It was common in the Orphanage to hear crying in the night, and most people just covered their ears with their pillow to try go to sleep. But on numerous occasions you’d hear one of the bigger children get up and punch the living daylights out the kid crying cos they were sick of the noise.

All the children had to work. They were given duties-some were told to fill bags of ‘powdery stuff’ or ‘little sweets’, others to clean and sharpen tools (many an accident happened to the kids). Outside the orphanage there was some kind of grain mill. Trevor and a few others were told they had to push this is they all wanted to eat. Pushing this ‘wheel of pain’ for hours on end was tortuous to say the least.

When he was younger (5-1O years old) Trevor was regularly bullied- Some of his fellow ‘inmates’ as they called themselves were cruel. They would call him names and say cruel things. One afternoon, a kid wrestled Trevor to the ground behind the cottage. He kept hitting him, over and over again until his face was mess, his nose was broken and he couldn’t get up. The people running the orphanage just watched and did nothing. Almost as if they were assessing him. This regular violent abuse though stopped around the age of 11 when Trevor started to grow. He was clearly getting strong from pushing the wheel. He was quite tall for his age and his muscles clearly showed he was strong. The next time someone tried to pick on Trevor he was able enough to fend off their attacks and nullify them. But Trevor started to try and stop all violence in the Orphanage. If he saw someone bullying another, if someone was about to get hit, Trevor would step in and stop it all-hence the nickname ‘Pacifus’.

Trevor never really had mates in the orphanage. Best not to cos they might leave, or worse betray you. However, all that changed when he met Benny Hophoodle-a mischievous, funny, daft as brush halfling. Benny was unlike the other orphans, because not matter how dark, how hard, how terrible life could be he always found the funny side of life. Trevor liked that. Benny always saw the positive and that made him happy. However, one day, Benny told Trevor that he had ‘appropriated’ some of the sweets that the kids were packing in bags. Trevor told him that he should put it back-if they found out that those sweets had gone missing, they could be in trouble. Benny agreed but said the best way to hide the evidence was to eat it-they’d never find them then. Besides, didn’t they deserve to have a treat? Hadn’t they earnt it. Trevor had to agree. And so, one fateful night, in Trevor’s 16th year, whilst laying on their beds, both Benny and Trevor ate a ‘little sweet’.

The next four and a half hours were the most profound, intense, and mind-blowing moments Trevor had ever spent. Random images erupted as if the insides of his lids were a screen. Trevor felt he was diving through bottomless fractals and honeycombs. Scaling lattices and gratings as tall as mountains and tracing the filigrees and fretwork of the Relief of Time. He was plucking noise out of thin air, spreading the sonic detritus over his person like some strange sort of salve. When he looked down his hands seemed to have melted to the floor in small, fleshy puddles. When he turned to Benny, benny seemed to be spewing aquatic fire with musical notes. Trevor could swear the walls were breathing, He see and taste colours. Colours he never even knew existed. The air seemed to thrum with activity. Magical dragonflies appeared tracing complicated patterns in the air, the seed heads of plume poppies raPled like snakes as his hand brushed by them and then burst making the air itself dense with sweetness. The word and sense of poignance flooded over Trevor. And then he saw his mother. The mother he never knew, never met. She was beautiful. She was kind, she was full of love. And then he felt himself inside her-being born again. It was the greatest experience of his life. Trevor had no idea, but he had just experienced his first psychedelic trip.

Trevor and Benny quickly agreed they had to experience it again. Trying to obtain the magic sweets would not be easy. But Benny was smart, quick, and clever. He’d find a way. And sure enough he did. And so, night after night, Benny and Trevor would disappear into those magical lands. At first it was wonderful, exhilarating, enchanting. The drug was the perfect escapism from the life they led. But like with all drugs, the dreams started to turn dark. Trevor’s mood changed as did Benny’s. And the more they took the drugs the worse it got. They would get irritable with other. Benny didn’t seem to make any jokes anymore, or when he did they were odd and made no sense. They started to get under each other’s skins. But still they took the drugs. There were times where Trevor couldn’t remember the ‘trips’ at all but woke up with bruises and scars over his body. His body felt as if he been in a fight or something, but he knew all he'd done was lay on the bed-right? His dreams started to turn to turn images of pools of blood, violence and killing- sometimes he’d even see those dreams when he was awake. Benny would look at him oddly sometimes and talk about pit fighting as if he could see Trevor’s dreams. But still they took the drugs - desperate to get back to their Shangri-La.

Trevor had no idea how long he took those drugs but now Benny didn’t need to steal them. Because a man, called Gaedren Lamm, who regularly visited the Orphanage told the people who ran the place to keep feeding it to them. Trevor and Benny couldn’t believe their luck- they could have as many magic sweets as they wanted. Plus, they no longer had to do the chores the other kids did. Lamm arranged it so they could just take the drugs and ....disappear. And that’s precisely what happened. Neither Benny nor Trevor could remember their trips anymore. They couldn’t find their way back to their Shangri-la no matter how times they tried. Nor could they remember the ‘trips’ themselves. They disappeared into nothingness. A black void. Everything was blank.

Even though Trevor could feel his body was growing and getting stronger, every Bme he awoke, he felt this overwhelming sense of nausea, sadness, and guilt. He had to stop but he couldn’t he was an addict. He kept taking the drugs. But then one fateful day, when,(although he did not know it) he was 20, after Benny suggested they probably needed to up their dose of the sweets to get back to their paradise, Trevor awoke to see his friend’s lifeless body on the floor. Benny looked as if every ounce of fluid had been drained from his body. You could see the bones through his translucent skin. His face looked in caved in. Blood spilled from his mouth and a look of surprise, anguish and despair seemed to be etched on his dead friend’s face. It was the worst site Trevor had ever experienced. Benny, the only friend he ever had was gone. His laughter would never echo in the halls again. Trevor distraught, disgusted and in utter despair ran from the orphanage, barrelling his way out. He stumbled through the streets, tears rolling down his eyes. Trevor just wanted to die. He found the highest point he could find (a church of Serenrae) and wanted to hurl himself off. But it was this point, fate destiny, whatever you wished to call it, intervened. The Priest of the church, Otto Doublebank, could see Trevor was in pain, he was angry and upset. He could see Trevor was a tormented soul wrestling with some ‘demon’ inside. And he could also see he was addict and at rock bottom. The priest taking pity on him somehow coerced Trevor off the ledge and decided to help him.

Trevor then spent the next year with Otto living at the church. He managed to fight his addiction and more importantly learn to live again. He considered himself blessed to have come through what he did. It could’ve gone so much worse for him. He felt born again. Knowing Trevor was in a good place now, Otto even found him a job working as Bouncer at the Cracked Weasel -a pub in Old Korvosa shortly after his 21st birthday. Trevor was the perfect choice as the one thing he hated was violence-unlike other bouncers who would tear up people and the joint at the earliest opportunity of any trouble, Trevor would do the opposite and try and calm everyone down-violence was always the last resort. Trevor has been at the Cracked Weasel now for two years. The landlord, Sirius Blackfire, is so impressed with Trevor (he has a notice up behind the bar ‘last incident 237 days ago’) that he offered him to live in the attic above the pub. Trevor is a happy half-orc. He regularly see’s Otto (his sponsor) to keep on straight and narrow and when not working visits the church of Serenrae to give thanks.

However, over the last six months working at the Cracked Weasel, Trevor has learnt some unpleasant truths-well, rumours that seem to ring true. The orphanage that Trevor spent growing up, is nothing more than a front. A ‘sweat factory’ for the thieves’ guild (The Cerulean Society) where kids are used to pack drugs, stolen goods, or anything else illegal. Abandoned kids are ‘chosen’ from the streets to live there under the pretence that they will be looked after but in reality, they are being assessed to see they may be of use to the guild-in other words it’s a place to groom thieves, thugs, murderers, assassins, saboteurs etc. Drugs are given to certain kids to bring out the worst or the best of them. And they are given as means of control. What better way to make someone do your bidding if they are totally dependent on you? Make them-an addict! Trevor has come to realise that the orphanage is a chain around anyone’s neck who is brought up there. And the person behind it all seems to be a certain Gaedren Lamm. The man who gave him and Benny the free sweets. Trevor believes that Lamm is responsible for making them addicts which ultimately led to Benny’s death and almost his. Trevor, if given the chance, is determined to stop this terrible man continuing this form of slavery on abandoned innocent children and making them and other people addicts in this great city. The problem is that he has no idea how to find him, or even stop him-rumour is, that he’s has a variety of bodyguards who never leave his side. They are mean, nasty, vicious and cruel. But there’s one in particular who’s meant to be the worst-he goes by the name of Shiv. No one has seen Shiv for a while. He stopped working for Gaedran at roughly the same time as Benny died….