++ persons of note ++

This section is currently under construction, due to all my books being packed up in the shed. O_o;; Mother of Nuitari!

Steel Brightblade - Five years before the War, the band of friends who would one day become its central figures said their farewells and departed the Inn of the Last Home. Though is was a strange arrangement, the idealistic and devout Sturm Brightblade and the fiery, charming Kitiara uth Matar set out together, intending to travel to Solamnia and seek out news of their respective fathers.

No one truly knows what happened in those days. The boy's foster mother, Sara Dunstan, later related a tale to Tanis and Caramon that suggested Kitiara had seduced Sturm for her own malicious amusement. Though afterward, the young knight wished to set things right and marry his 'mistress', Kit would have none of it. She left him before reaching their destination, unaware that she carried his child - a child she did not want. After a long illness and a difficult birth that threatened to claim her life - but, miraculously, did not - she abandoned the babe much as she had his father.

From here, the story is sure: Despite her best efforts at raising the child to be a kind and honouable man like his father, Sara was unable to purge him of the darkness that infested his soul. At the age of twelve - eight years after the War? - he was sought and claimed by Ariakan, founder of the Knights of Takhisis.

In the guise of Ariakan's mistress, Sara bided her time; awaiting the day when she might try again to free her son from the grasp of darkness. In secret, she stole away to the mainland; there pleading with Caramon and Tanis to aid her quest. A daring plan was put into action - slipping ino Storm's Keep during the chaos of a mock-battle, the three drugged and abducted young Brightblade and delivered him to his father's tomb. What he saw there is as much a matter of speculation as the days of Kit and Sturm, but it cannot be denied that he somehow came away in possession of a Starjewel: The soul-binding gift once passed, amazingly, from an elven woman to a human male. Still, it did not sway him, and he soon underwent the Test of Takhisis and full induction into the Knights.

We first meet Steel in the story Kitiara's Son (The Second Generation). Here, we are told the strange circumstances surrounding his birth, the incidents on the Isle and in the High Clerist's Tower, and what occurred immediately thereafter. In the same book, there is an excerpt from Dragons of Summer Flame - interestingly, his name is spelled there as 'Steele'. Why they decided to go the other way? Well - the boy's just full of mystery, isn't he.

It is in Dragons of Summer Flame, however, that we are fully exposed to the son of Sturm - A different time. A different war. A different man - yet the paths trodden by both are eerily similar.