Thennek entry #8
- KL Forslund
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
After we returned to Saltmarsh, a stranger enlisted us in a quest that turned into a kidnapping of sorts. It started in the pub with most of us eating dinner. Vantiss communed with nature. Or dead things. Maybe both. A stranger approached in the typical way they do with a job, and even an unknown patron joined in.
The next moment, we were whisked away to a set of trials to entertain giant powerful beings. My recollection of what all entailed became fuzzy on our return. Obviously, we succeeded, and I have this sense that we were in mortal peril, if not from the challenges, but from the risk of not being entertaining to our observers.
Much like a small being in a mad wizard’s crazed experimental dungeon. Not that I had much prior experience with such, but my studies at Greyhawk College included a variety of topics less than tangential to astronomy. I suppose the eclectic nature of my schooling might make me suitable as an advisor or such to a ruler. Had things not turned out as they did in the Great Kingdom of Northern Aerdy after the king sent me off to school.
I suppose I have several secrets, not the least of which is that my parents served in the court. My mother was a sage, and my father an apothecary to the royal family. As a child, the king doted on me, even sending me to the tutors that taught his own family.
Growing up in Eastfair, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, and living amidst the royal court, I lived a somewhat sheltered, yet informed life. I had access to my mother’s books, the library, yet really didn’t get out in the city, as though they were protecting me.
When I’d devoured every text and treatise, the suggestion that perhaps I would be better placed in a college in none other than Greyhawk. There, the libraries beckoned, and many the hours I spent there, pouring over words written by sages across Oerth. It was near the end of my first semester when word of the coup back home reached me. The royal family, close advisors, all gone. As a precaution, my mother had advised me not to go into much detail of where I came from in case I might be a target or leveraged against the king.
Now, with my parents dead, home destroyed, and possibly enemies wishing the same for me, I had no one to confide in. I became more aloof and invested myself in my studies. I found myself drawn to the astronomy course in the following semester. There I could spend long hours alone, in the night, with my stars and notes.
That is, until Lapu Droust scheduled the observatory for the same night I did.
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