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The world is changing. Nobody denies it, nor would they. How COULD they? Anyone, scholar or simpleton, can see it. An era of peace prosperity, and stability is at an end—that’s what they say. Of course, ‘they’ is a variable, nebulous term. Not everyone says that.
Some… Some see opportunity.
The Paladin King is dead, and his shining city mourns for him. The WORLD mourns for him, it sometimes seems… Even his rivals. His great peace is fragile, weakened by his passing. His eldest and most obvious heir is missing, presumed dead after all this time; his second son seems to have cracked under the pressure of leadership, retiring to a countryside estate with his wife and daughter His youngest child—his daughter—reigns in his stead, unsteadily.
Dragons have returned. THAT was a shocker. REAL dragons, just like in the legends, razing farmlands and eating cows and cowherds. They say that the Queen’s foreign-born Prince-Consort—some Easterling—drove them away… But nobody really trusts that they won’t return.
In the city, in the plains and barrows, across field and fief, fear presides and rumours run rampant. A kingdom of monsters arises, some say—an Empire of Evil, simmering and scheming in volcano-lairs amidst the Bloodrise mountains; there is talk of dark-eyed dwarves, black-skinned elves, and shapeshifting lizardmen lurking in alleys, rat-monsters in the sewers. Goblin bandits have been emboldened to attack merchants on the road, orc chieftains beat tom-toms and bellow blood-oaths. The men of the East retreat and wall their cities; to the South, squabbling factions rally together and prepare for a trade-war, or worse.
But to you… Well, this is just the world. You are young, or at least youngISH. Everyone always speaks of the ‘good old days’, but you never knew them. Instability, and all the dangerous and exciting possibilities which come with it, this is all you have ever known. This is an Age of Uncertainty, and you are but one of its countless children. Perhaps some people could accept that…
But not everyone. To one person in particular, it was impossible. She was merely a neophyte Mage Apprentice of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower, sheltered and untraveled, but unwilling to accept and live with the uncertainty everyone else accepted—the vagueness, the secrecy, the half-understanding. Where all others were satisfied to accept the curriculum, and to make a graduating thesis of some incremental improvement in the scope of knowledge, she wanted it ALL. Hers would be the research that finally got to the core of why the world was this way… To understand it and, maybe, to change it.
But to do that, she would need some help.
Some… Some see opportunity.
The Paladin King is dead, and his shining city mourns for him. The WORLD mourns for him, it sometimes seems… Even his rivals. His great peace is fragile, weakened by his passing. His eldest and most obvious heir is missing, presumed dead after all this time; his second son seems to have cracked under the pressure of leadership, retiring to a countryside estate with his wife and daughter His youngest child—his daughter—reigns in his stead, unsteadily.
Dragons have returned. THAT was a shocker. REAL dragons, just like in the legends, razing farmlands and eating cows and cowherds. They say that the Queen’s foreign-born Prince-Consort—some Easterling—drove them away… But nobody really trusts that they won’t return.
In the city, in the plains and barrows, across field and fief, fear presides and rumours run rampant. A kingdom of monsters arises, some say—an Empire of Evil, simmering and scheming in volcano-lairs amidst the Bloodrise mountains; there is talk of dark-eyed dwarves, black-skinned elves, and shapeshifting lizardmen lurking in alleys, rat-monsters in the sewers. Goblin bandits have been emboldened to attack merchants on the road, orc chieftains beat tom-toms and bellow blood-oaths. The men of the East retreat and wall their cities; to the South, squabbling factions rally together and prepare for a trade-war, or worse.
But to you… Well, this is just the world. You are young, or at least youngISH. Everyone always speaks of the ‘good old days’, but you never knew them. Instability, and all the dangerous and exciting possibilities which come with it, this is all you have ever known. This is an Age of Uncertainty, and you are but one of its countless children. Perhaps some people could accept that…
But not everyone. To one person in particular, it was impossible. She was merely a neophyte Mage Apprentice of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower, sheltered and untraveled, but unwilling to accept and live with the uncertainty everyone else accepted—the vagueness, the secrecy, the half-understanding. Where all others were satisfied to accept the curriculum, and to make a graduating thesis of some incremental improvement in the scope of knowledge, she wanted it ALL. Hers would be the research that finally got to the core of why the world was this way… To understand it and, maybe, to change it.
But to do that, she would need some help.
