Bolys Quinn was born on small farmstead a couple of days' ride west from Restov. Growing up on the edge of the Stolen Lands was a hard life. It was hard to grow crops, you might wake up to find a bear eating the livestock, and sometimes people got sick for no reason. Every now and then bandits would show up to try and steal from them, but they’d learned how to fight bandits off over the years, and the outlaws would often leave worse off than when they arrived.
A lot of people would have chosen to move elsewhere, to more fertile, less dangerous lands, but not Bolys Quinn’s family. The way Bolys’s grandfather told it before he was killed by a pack of wolves, they’d owned a great deal of land further south in the Stolen Lands. His great-great-and then some grandfather had been a prosperous farmer. They’d been driven from their home by – well, it changed with each telling. Sometimes it was brigands, other times vicious fey creatures. Sometimes it was an invading barbarian horde. Whatever it was, this was as far as they’d been willing to go from their ancestral home, and they weren’t going to go any farther. Bolys never believed it. The Stolen Lands were savage and wild. No one could tame them without an army, and he’d never heard of any nations existing down there. Still, they were nice stories to listen to at night around the fire.
His whole family – aunts, uncles, cousins – all lived on the farmstead. Like the rest of the family, Bolys learned how to farm the hard land, and eventually how to hunt and survive in the woods on the frontier. He found he was quite good at the latter, if not so much the former, so when he was 13, he began hiring himself out as a guide for the occasional prospector who’d heard a rumor of some vein of precious metal, or for parties of noblemen who wanted to go hunting in the “savage frontiers.” The money ended up being pretty good, and his family was grateful for the extra income, which they would use to buy equipment on the few occasions they went into the villages a couple days to the north. Bolys saved some of it away from each job, though, until one day, whenever “one day” came.
Then, while guiding some young nobleman from Restov on a stag hunt, he heard them talking about some expedition to the Stolen Lands – how the Swordlords were going to reclaim them and sponsor kingdoms down there. Bolys thought, How much could I make if I offered my services to one of these expeditions? Plus, I could go see the Stolen Lands, and maybe see what grampa was always talking about. So, he told his family his plans, gathered up his equipment and gold, and left for Restov. Once there, he purchased some new armor to set himself up to make sure he looked spiffy, and presented himself as a guide available to any of the expeditions. This was his chance to really make a name. His family would be proud.
