Day 1: Late Morning

The line really is long. I thought I got here early, but the people in front of me started lining up last night. Hopefully I’ll be in within a few hours.

They say you can get famous as an adventurer. I’m not so sure about that, but I better write a little biography here just in case. It could be worth something someday! Plus I’ve got nothing better to do. So…

I am a son of the Darkeswordes, an old and well-known family around Farmington. Supposedly we are descended from knights; I don’t know if that’s true. If it is, we’ve fallen a long way. Growing up, we owned some of our own land—two fields and the plot our cottage was on. We leased additional fields from Baron Stitler. So we do better than most families. Or at least, we did.

In County Frank, like most places, every family has to provide able men for the levies each summer. But if a family provides a son as a full-time man-at-arms they’re exempt from most levies. And if they provide two men-at-arms they’re paid an annual stipend that cancels out part of their taxes.

That’s how my brother and I got into the military. It was hard to outfit both of us, but Granddad always was wily about money. We managed. And that guaranteed our family’s prosperity, at least until Darren took a goblin crossbow bolt in the chest. I wasn’t with him when it happened but I heard about it quick enough. He was buried at the nearest town and that was that.

Except it wasn’t, for us. His Excellency added Darren’s gear to the armoury instead of returning it. Plus we no longer had our stipend, and our rents were raised that year. I immediately requested dispensation to return home, hoping to find a wage somewhere and help out. But my request wasn’t approved until the week that the baron “bought” our land from us. We rented a smaller farm and did what we could to maintain it, but our debt got worse and worse. Granddad died. And the rest of us were on the verge of becoming bonded serfs.

It was then that the call for adventurers went out. My father first suggested I go, and my mom agreed. I couldn’t believe that. So I gathered together my old gear and set out. That was just over a week ago. Mom and Dad think they can hold on as free people for the rest of the year, but if things don’t change by next harvest we’ll all be serfs.