The Narrator's page

Though the days still carry the warmth of summer, earlier sunsets, cooler nights and fog shrouded mornings signal the approach of autumn along the Lost Coast, and the citizens of Sandpoint prepare for the Swallowtail festival on the upcoming equinox. The small coastal town bustles with activity as the dawn breaks. The days catch is laid out for the locals to peruse, and merchants and farmers from all around make their way into town to try and profit from the festival crowds.

The festival itself is still two days away, and already the crowds in the market start early, as the dawn descends the face of the Old Light. Many merchants have arrived days ahead of Town Market, hoping to milk every last copper from the masses.

Kinmorn is helping with final preparations at the cathedral, and tending to the needs of the flock. Mitnal is likely at market himself, looking for peace through commerce, perhaps. And Gengar is probably there as well. Temptation is, after all, terribly tempting.

Kinmorn, you've met both Mitnal and Gengar in passing, and know both their names, though whether they remember yours is known only to them. You're also aware that there's a young halfling druid in the area, though you've yet to actually meet him. You're pretty sure he'll be in attendance to see the release of the Swallowtails, and expect to meet him then.

Jessa and Shantare are arriving in Sandpoint just this morning, as part of a larger caravan primarily composed of merchants. Jessa booked passage with the caravan in order to attend the Swallowtail festival, figuring it was as good a place as any to start her Pathfinder journey. She travelled with one other newly minted Pathfinder named Torrick Vey, a self absorbed, arrogant ass of a man, who first tried to get in Jessa's pants, and has been nothing but a colossal prick to her ever since. When he deigns to speak with her at all, that is. Vey is not staying for the Swallowtail festival, but traveling on immediately, heading deep into Storval Plateau to seek his rightful glory.

Shantare joined up with the caravan along the way. She had already been ranging along the Lost Coast, and decided to keep watch on the caravan as it traveled, and attend the Swallowtail festival once in Sandpoint.

Prologue: Wars and Rumors of War

War comes naturally to the humanoid races. 'Twas ever thus. Mere skimming of the dusty scrolls and worm nibbled tomes of the Archivists histories proves this to be true. Long through the ages have we made war -- upon each other, upon ourselves, upon any living thing that chances down the road or soars through the air above. If you believe the epics and odes of the bards, we have even made war upon the gods themselves. But only damp and swooning maidens believe bards, and even maidens only believe bards long enough to shed their knickers and collapse sweaty into their fathers' straw bales. All of which is to say that murdering other living things en masse is perhaps what the so called civilized races excel at most; though damp and swooning maidens and the painted priestesses of the Red Temples might argue different. But that is a scholarly debate for another day.

War should then be no more alarming than a sunrise, the bloom of a rose, or the wheel of the stars overhead. Just another turn in the Great Spiral of life. Yet we are incapable of refraining from alarm at any other part of life's circles, so why then should war be any different? Only kings and generals have ever seemed to grasp the dull inevitability of war, and among them only handful ever grasped it enough to be any good at it. The rest seem content to bravely throw wave after wave of their own subjects at each other, then pick through the aftermath with the crows, looking for loose coin. 'Twas ever thus.

Still, if one reads closely through the histories and silly poems, sifting carefully through the obvious calumnies and self-promotions to get at the kernels of truth, certain events and patterns begin to stand out. Moments in time when something truly important seems to be at stake. Moments when kings and generals, maidens and priestesses, the sun and the flowers and the wheeling stars overhead, bards and murderers and even the gods themselves all seem to hold their breath at once, wondering if any of them at all would continue to be after tomorrow.

Afterward, the kings and generals and bards, and especially the gods themselves, like to pour on the calumnies and self promotions, and play up their own part in things. They like to strut and preen and proclaim that the outcome was always predetermined by their hand, in whatever way secures the adoration and obedience of the masses, and the Archivists dutifully record it thus. For their part, the masses are as alarmed as any other time – it's all the same to them.

But that is never the truth of what actually happened. The truth at such times almost always lies in the actions of a small handful of people, unaware of their own significance. People just trying to get by in their daily lives without getting shanked, or catching the pox, or one of uncounted other ways to take up residence in a pine box and serve oneself up to wormy feast. People who are almost certainly ignorant of their own import because they go about their petty errands in some muddy speck-hole like the mining town of Diamond Lake.