In one particular county of the Highlands, itself of no particular distinction, there squatted a solitary manor separated from all its neighbors by a narrow foot-bridge that crossed the gap between the pillar upon which it was constructed and the larger plateau where the rest of the town went about its business. The locals spoke very little of that structure and less of its inhabitants save when pressed, to which the reply would uniformly be that the ancient and decrepit structure was, as those who resided within it, the House of Yso.

Now the House of Yso, that being the people, were by the account of all those around them very strange. They prided themselves on being pure humans – they claimed, at least, that since the great war not a one of their ancestors had crossed with any of the other stranded folk of the Highlands – barring bastards whose children would, owing to their impurity, not be considered part of the House, at least. To their neighbors, however distant owing to the construction of the crooked house of the House of Yso upon its separate pillar, this explained quite a lot, for they were no doubt a quite inbred clan if their boasts were true.

The Crooked House in which the scions of the House of Yso dwelt was also quite strange. It was larger than any other of the plateau to which it somewhat belonged, and indeed the manor was of a prodigious size not often seen in the highlands at all, owing to the scarcity of good lumber with which to construct such a thing in any quick or reasonable fashion. Its crookedness may have been a testament to the dearth of good building materials, but certainly owed much to the congenital madness of its residents, for it listed very noticeably to the east, and had since its very construction. The wall opposite that one was also bowed outward, though more slightly as though tugging against the other side of the crooked house and preventing it from tumbling down. The front and rear did not stand straight either, though their imbalance was subtler still, and perhaps for that a bit more unnerving to stare at, sitting as it did just below the threshold of human perception, where the eye knows that there is something wrong but is not capable of divining exactly what that wrongness is.

Many wondered why someone would build a house that way. Though unnerving, the errors of the front and back most walls (those to the north and south) were forgivable. The eastern wall, which listed so precipitously, however, was a very clear blunder that by any school of architectural thought should have been corrected long before putting the roof on the thing. If it had listed over some time after construction, that would be another thing, but it was abundantly clear, owing to the fact that different walls leaned different directions, that the Crooked House had been built that way. The only insight as to why was that it’s builder, who a bitter old man from his youth onward, had called the twisted mansion “Paragon House”, and so had perhaps built it in its odd, misshapen and leaning way as a commentary against the Paragons of the highlands, who were normally held in quite high esteem in every quarter.

It was because, unlike the xenophobic and inbred House of Yso, most of the people who resided on the highland plateaus were of an ancestry that came from multiple races. Many could still claim to be a majority one species or another, and thus a human would still be human even if there was, somewhere back, a great grandfather who was mostly an elf and another ancestor who had been a displaced Rakshasa. Some, however, had no clear claim to any one species more than any other. In the majority of those, mixed bloodlines had been no kinder than the measures the House of Yso had taken to prevent them, and they were largely hampered with many of the faults of those that made up their background while gifted but few of the virtues. Paragons, however, were those who had blended in what was usually considered a lovely package the virtues of their mixed parentage. The Paragons were, some said, the true future of the highlands people, a race as whole and pure as any that had given its blood to the pool from which the Paragons drew.

While a Paragon might expect – owing to the comeliness that was considered a prerequisite for claiming the title as well as their propensities towards wealth, status, and magical power – to receive a warm welcome at any other house in the highlands, one that approached the crooked house of the House of Yso would often be welcomed only very icily, or in some generations even turned away from the door of the ancient, leaning manor. This was known to the rest of the folk in the town upon the larger plateau to which the pillar that held the crooked house adjoined, and thus travelers would be customarily warned away from it, if they needed to be warned at all. Thus, it was exceptionally rare for the House of Yso to receive guests in their crooked house, and rarer still for those guests to be strangers of Paragon stock, who could receive what they required or in some cases whatever they asked from others.

Yet one cold and gloomy day, when the wind blew down from lead grey skies and smelled of tears unshed, when the boards of the crooked house groaned and creaked like the bones of an old man and those within took little solace in their isolation upon that lonely, loathsome pillar of stone, a stranger and a Paragon alike crossed the rickety bridge that separated the House of Yso from all other men.

At that time, the House of Yso was in a significant period of degeneracy. Twenty years before, when the current generation had been freshly conceived, the crooked house held near a dozen members of the House of Yso, all but one of which had met their ends, whether by age like the old patriarch and matriarch of the House, by disease, or by some misadventure or other within or around the crooked house itself. The three that remained were the current patriarch of the family Louis Yso, a severe man who resembled in his terrible countenance one of far more advanced age than his own two and forty years, and his twin children Jacob and Genevieve Yso, who presented in his mind great hope for the future of a dying house, for their mother had come to the House of Yso from a foreign land where the miscegenation that the House of Yso so professed to despise was unknown, and before her untimely demise had done them the service of providing new stock for the folk that felt themselves the only pure humans in the highlands.

Louis Yso was the very model of a patriarch of the House of Yso, with his prematurely ancient look, perpetual scowl, and extreme conservatism that resisted any change that might come to his world. Life had done much to make him bitter, and as what was currently the last patriarch of the ancient and holy House of Yso, he took it upon himself to preach the evils of the world around them until he believed the rhetoric himself. As to why he, freed as few of his ancestors before him from the entanglements of a large family, did not attempt to leave the crooked house and find greener pastures in the kingdom from whence his late wife had come, it was because the only part of Louis Yso that was stronger than his bitterness was his stubbornness, and he would sooner die or perhaps even muddy the bloodline than abandon the crooked house of the House of Yso.

Jacob Yso and his sister and expected future bride Genevieve Yso, however, were cut from a different cloth. Perhaps it was their mother’s independence, that lead her to abandon a far-off land and find herself within the House of Yso alongside a then youthful and enthusiastic Louis Yso, that drove Jacob and Genevieve to listen only halfheartedly to their father’s ramblings, or perhaps it was simply that given their age and relative isolation from the whole of the world outside the crooked house they were naturally curious about those lands and their inhabitants, having abandoned the unreasoning fear of youth and not yet gained the rationalized terror of more advanced age.

Thus, when the stranger came to the door of the House of Yso, one might have expected that the patriarch of the family would deny a paragon entrance to his crooked house, and that it would end simply with such a figure being turned away. But Louis Yso, far up in his dark and dank study merely growled into his books expecting that his children should, by their age, know what to do with whoever had the gall to call on the door of the crooked house of the House of Yso, and ignored the knocking. Meanwhile, Jacob Yso, who was far more charitable towards anyone, and especially in comparison to his father towards a Paragon, was the one who answered the door.

The woman at the door was, by most standards, very beautiful. Her skin was very pale, a hue of alabaster only rarely found among humans and so suggesting some Kor ancestry. Her poise, and the slight taper of her ears suggested elven heritage, though the shape of her face and her eyes were very much human, while her eyes though human in shape were as golden as those of a Rakshasa. What other ancestry the woman had could not be seen upon her surface, and that was probably for the best. At least, it was as far as Jacob Yso was concerned, who from the first glance could think of no alteration that would increase the stranger’s loveliness. She began to introduce herself and the smitten Jacob Yso ushered her inside the crooked house.

Very shortly, she gave her name and said that she was a traveler, bound not just to another quarter of the highlands but away from them altogether. In a few days, she said, she would be moving on, but until the time came she would need a place to stay and freshen up, for where she was going she would have to look her best. This commotion, quiet and stately though it was, caught the attention of Genevieve Yso. She was, like her brother, not usually afraid of the people who existed outside their house, but she kept to herself very customarily, and though fear and hatred were not her way she was not comfortable with a stranger of any description being allowed inside.

At her skittish approach, she was introduced. What Genevieve Yso made of the stranger was, by nature, different than what her brother did. Young lady Yso saw a woman of somewhat greater stature than herself, and blessed with a fair countenance to be sure, but she also saw a hungry look in the stranger’s golden eyes… eyes that were almost too old for the woman they were a part of. Still, Genevieve Yso told herself that it was not good for her to hold to prejudices and superstitions, and thus did her best to cast aside her disquiet with the situation.

It was some hour or two before Louis Yso discovered his houseguest. Now, had he had his choice, he would have barred the strange paragon woman from entering his domain, but as she had been invited in Louis Yso was bound by his honor and strange conservatism to hold to a code that, among other things, gave him no power to cast out a guest who had not in some way abused the hospitality of the crooked house of the House of Yso.

As such, Louis Yso said very little. What he did say made his displeasure with his son and the presence of his guest very clear, however. Once the point was made, he retreated once again to his chambers. Thereafter, the stranger entertained the younger members of the House of Yso with some tales of the lands beyond their reckoning, both from where she had come and sparser suspicions about where she was to go. With a few bits of salted goat’s meat and cheese and a few glasses of wine, an afternoon became an evening became night, and Jacob Yso saw fit to attend personally to the lovely stranger’s lodging within the crooked house.

In that darkened, upstairs chamber the stranger told Jacob Yso that she had noticed a few things about him. How his eyes scarce left her, how his heart beat fast and strong. For a moment, he was afraid that he had given offense, but without words the stranger made clear she was anything but offended, and Jacob Yso did not leave her chambers that night.

While the next day Loius Yso was too busy scowling at the very presence of a paragon in his crooked house to notice the entanglement, Genevieve Yso was not so easily blind to what had transpired in the night. Though she felt that it might provide some trouble down the line, she forced herself to say nothing.

That day, which otherwise would have been lost in the echoes of bliss for Jacob Yso, was soured by his father’s dark looks and his sister’s poorly hidden reticence. These things weighing on his mind, when night came again he found himself reluctant to once more share the beautiful stranger’s bed, no matter how much he yearned for it. But the stranger herself was very persuasive, and said that it would be simple enough to ask forgiveness – for was Jacob Yso not a man, to make his own decisions? Assuaged and inflamed, Jacob Yso decided to stay with his lover once more.

On the second full day of the paragon’s residence, Louis Yso began to suspect what his daughter knew and his son was doing. He dragged his son away from some enrapturing tale and issued the rules of the crooked house and the House of Yso – though bastards had been sired in the past, in these dark days when the House of Yso numbered three, such a thing was not allowed. The command was dark and dire as everything Louis Yso did, and backed with a threat of disinheritance – Genevieve was pretty, after all, and if it came to that Louis Yso would find her a husband from the downland humans who did not cross with other sorts.

In the late evening, confronted by his lover’s eyes and the scent of her perfume, Jacob Yso told her what had to be done, though it was not his wish to leave her be. To this, his lover had a solution to whisper into his ear. You are a man grown, Jacob Yso, she said, Why should you not be the head of the House of Yso? Why should your father wield such power over you? But how to be free, was the question, and to this she had an answer as well: there must come a day for any child to bury his parents.

With so many sweet promises hanging on his deed, Jacob Yso stalked to his father’s chambers, which were upon the far-leaning eastern wall of the crooked house of the house of Yso. For but a moment, he hesitated… but in the dark of the night with passion and rage alike driving him on, Jacob Yso struck, sinking a silvery knife into his slumbering father’s chest, not once but a dozen times before, to be sure, he opened the east facing window, that hung over the cliff, and cast the mortal remains of Louis Yso to the jungle far below.

Frenzied love stilled Jacob Yso’s guilt, and caused him to fall into a deep slumber that lasted long into the morning. When he finally rose, the lover he had killed for had already left their bed. Creeping through the house, now realizing he had more than his own conscience to answer to, he sought the two women who now shared his abode.

Jacob Yso found them in the parlor, his lover sitting with his sister resting her head upon her lap. At the sound of Jacob’s intrusion, both the women looked up. His lover looked up, and her eyes were different – no longer golden, their pale blue were oddly familiar. The source of that familiarity became horrifyingly clear when he saw his sister gaze at him – she had no eyes at all, the empty sockets leaking small tears of blood.

“Ellia!” Jacob called the “paragon” woman by her name, “Ellia, what has happened?”

“Why, dear,” she replied, venom in every word, “I did say I had to look my best, and those old eyes were starting to lose their luster. Dear Genevieve’s were far better.”

Ellia stood, leaving the blind daughter of the House of Yso to weep alone. Jacob, who had killed for her, who thought he would have died for her, stood dumbfounded as she approached.

“I also need a heart.” She said, “But hers is a bit small and weak… why take it, when yours is already mine?”

Then, taking with her what was hers, Ellia the Endbringer left the crooked house of the House of Yso.