Characters

Sourdough Nocinuer of Nar - a male human

You were born in the small farming village of Union. Your parents were vegetable farmers, perhaps the best in the entire district of Nar, winning many awards. People came from over a hundred miles for just a sample of your mom's famous Breadgourd Pie. Certainly, Nocinuer Farms was a name most often spoken when one was hungry. You enjoyed life there, with your parents and your three younger sisters, Zelma, Herriette, and Proteezia. But your life there was simple, too dreadfully boring and simple. More often than not, your thoughts turned to things beyond merely seeds, measures of ripeness and firmness of fruit flesh. Certainly, there must be more intrigue in the world than the illegal magics behind Farmer Jabbey's giant blue zucchinis. You wondered about the great city of East Lansing. Who hadn't heard of the Splendiferously Excellent Council and the Most Exalted Grand-High Pooh-bah? Merchants struggling to get a break on their goods surcharges, back door bribes, perhaps, and maybe even sordid lust affairs behind closed doors. This was interesting. You swore to yourself that when you were old enough, you would pack up your belongings, and head for the big city, East Lansing.

Your first steps on the road to the capital city came when Damon the Bringer, the traveling jack-of-all-trades came to Nar, and announced he was looking for a new apprentice.

He held several contests, and though you were not the fastest, strongest or the most clever, he chose you. As was his custom, Damon the Bringer brought your parents a gift to replace you. He gave them a strange device, about four inches long with various metal protrusions. He called it an 'every-job knife' and it certainly lived up to its name. Not only did it core Cousin Goobin's super-sweet apples with one stroke, but with a handy attachment, it easily became just the thing for getting those prickly waterpear seeds out from Grammy Gelsik's gums.

Damon, as he asked you to call him, then brought you on his travels. Damon had no house, farm or mill. He traveled from town to town, trying to help out where he could. Damon was a demanding master.

"You never know when a situation is going to require more than some good fertilizer to deal with. Life is about flexibility; it's not just what you know, but how you use your knowledge that matters", Damon would tell you. He was always on about flexibility, of mind, body and spirit.

You traveled north and helped some gnomes re-route a river that was beginning to flood their homes. You traveled east and aided some farmers whose crops had been ruined by the torrential assault of the evil cumulo-nimbist, Toren Cloudsqueezer. You traveled south and helped a small village overcome a multiple excess pig birth problem. You traveled west and built a roadside inn; Damon even let you carve the Inn's name over the door.

You learned a lot from Damon, but you craved more. All your life had been about getting to the big city, and now that Damon had prepared you with the practical knowledge, experience and common sense you needed, you were itching to get there and soak up the experience. You weren't sure how Damon would take this idea, and even after coming to the decision to leave, it took you several days to talk to Damon about it.

"Master, can I speak with you?" you asked. You only called him 'Master' when talking about very important issues. Damon looked up.

"Yes, Sourdough?" he responded.

"I... uh, well..." you stammered, "I wanted to talk to you about..."

"Going to East Lansing", he finished your thought. "I was wondering when you were going to ask me when you could go."

Full of surprise, you stared at your master. His eyes seemed deep wells of wisdom and understanding. He smiled gently as he continued. "You've learned all I can teach you; it's time for you to move on. You know it, and I know it. Life is about change. Your life changed when you left your parents to come with me, and now your life changes again, and it will change again in the future. Remember your lessons and embrace the changes. After a while you'll start to see the similarities in all the changes, how different situations aren't so different. Remember, the more things change, the more they stay the same. You'll do well in the big city. You've learned my lessons, and that will help you greatly. Don't worry about me, I'll find a new apprentice and bring change to yet another."

It was a tearful, bittersweet, melancholy good-bye, as you parted with Damon the Bringer, your master and friend. Soon after, you finally arrived in East Lansing.

Culture shock. At first, you weren't ready for the sheer volume of information that flooded your way. Secret societies and underground coalitions, illegal gambling halls rumored to be funded by high-ranking members of society, lists of brothel frequenters, the dirty deeds went on and on ...it was exactly what you had been looking for...and soon you were sucked in.

Your first mistake, in retrospect, was joining the K.A.G.O.K. group. This group, the Knights Against the Governmental Obscurement of Knowledge, seemed to have some logical gripes. Clearly, there were or had been significant efforts by Council Members or their representatives to cover up important events, hiding them from the citizens of the Kingdom. Events had even been created, merely to cover up other's wrongdoing. K.A.G.O.K.'s big problem, and the one which eventually caused you to leave the group, was that they believed that the entire history of the Darklord, and the reason for the building of the vault and institution of the Great Hunt, was completely made up by the government. They believed that the entire story was concocted to cover up something, the whole business termed "The Black-Box Scandal". Their theory was that the vault, which was supposedly built to house the great magical items which were retrieved during the Great Hunts, was actually built to contain a great magical Black Box, an artifact of such power, that it bestowed wishes upon whomever controlled it. Supposedly, the Council had kept the item hidden from the general populace these many years, using its power for their own personal gain. K.A.G.O.K. claimed that the government would have you believe that the origin of the Great Hunt stemmed from the supposed banishing of the Darklord. In fact, they believed that there never really was a Darklord, that the entire story was fabricated to give purpose to the building of the vault and the origin of the Hunt. The Council told the populace that the Hunt was necessary, to amass items of a highly magical nature, such that East Lansing would be prepared, should a threat of the magnitude of the dread Darklord ever occur again.

After a few months, the common sense Damon had taught you kicked in, and it became clear that these characters weren't quite rational. Their main goal was to eradicate any item connected with the Darklord from the land. They assumed that if there were no evidence of the Darklord, then he couldn't have existed. You asked them if they had found any such items. They claimed that they had, and that they had been destroyed. You pointed out to them that the fact that they found the item was evidence that maybe the Darklord did exist. They almost crucified you. You kept your mouth shut for a while after that. After the group's third failed attempt at burning down a library in the city, you left the group, and have kept your distance ever since. They have recently left the city and moved to some location in the Gehenge Swamp.

Once free of K.A.G.O.K., you started becoming more involved in mainstream political issues. You started hanging around the Universities. There are two major Universities in East Lansing, The University of East Lansing, and East Lansing State. It is here where you first learned about the political parties of East Lansing, and soon, you swore your allegiance to the Bottom Line Party. They believed in less governmental intrusion into anything that would restrict trade or commerce. You thought back to the farm: Would Grandpa Johekkey ever stand for a tax on his valley-famous giant cumberkins? Certainly not! You began fundraising for one of the Pooh-bah candidates, the famed wine merchant, Namor. You soon found out, however, that the regulations regarding fundraising here were so strict and so complicated, that by the time a potential contributor could be verified as being legally able to contribute, they had either changed their minds, or they had spent their money elsewhere. Even if you could still get them to contribute, there were various duties, taxes and tariffs which had to be paid on the contributions themselves, leaving your candidate with almost nothing for an agonizing amount of work.

One day, however, an elf came into campaign headquarters. He was dressed rather regally, with a high air about him. You almost gave him directions to the snobby Ffegs campaign headquarters, the way he was dressed (like Hammerhan could use the money!). The elf spoke softly with the campaign manager for a few minutes, a small bag exchanged hands, and he was off. The money went into the campaign fund, and used to support Namor, but it was never recorded. This was when you began to realize that maybe there were other ways to raise support. Maybe these ridiculous rules were meant to be broken. Or maybe this wasn't the political party for you.

You finished the fundraising campaign out. It was only two months more. Once you saw the team that Namor had assembled for the Hunt, however, you regretted the past six months. His team was ridiculous. Every creature on his team was designed for the water. You weren't sure how you would feel if you were on a team with a sahuagin, a sea dwarf and a giant squid in a tank. It turned out that it was a good thing that you weren't with them. They were all killed in the underwater room of Spellbinder's tower. Fortunately for the Bottom Line Party, another candidate, the merchant Pharondondalae, hired a crack team of adventurers from the other continent, who successfully won the Hunt, crowning Pharondondalae as Pooh-bah, where he has reigned these past seven years.

The past seven years for you, however, were not quite as rewarding, although they weren't horrible. You got involved with this private investigator, Sham Shamshonite. He had been looking for an assistant, and you needed the work. At first, he had you cleaning up his office, getting him lunch from a nearby tavern and running letters to all corners of the city. Eventually, however, he let you in on some casework.

Sham had been approached by a female gnome, by the name of Keya Rigareg. She claimed that her husband, Hoaf, had disappeared two days ago and the police had been no help. She wanted him found. After Sham questioned her, he took you aside. "Shourdough", he said, "I tink dish broadsh a little wacky. But weez betta check it out, jusht in caysh. Sheez what ya can find out. Shtart wit da sheedy shide a town." You did some snooping. You found out that Hoaf had been drinking at a bar called the Sleeping Snake on the night he disappeared. Evidently, he was somewhat drunk, had gotten upset at a dwarf about losing some kind of bet, didn't pay him, and stormed out, presumably heading home. You tracked down the dwarf, a nasty sort, by the name of Kreegan Blackarm. He wasn't very helpful. In fact, he tried to squeeze the money that the gnome supposedly owed him out of you, thinking you were some friend of his. There might have been some foul play on his part, but you had a hunch that it was something else. You reported back to Sham.

"Shleeping Shnake, huh?" said Sham. "Good work. Bettuh keep on it." You did some more snooping, and found a rather unsavory halfling rogue who claimed he had some information, for the right price. You didn't have much gold, but it was really important to you to impress Sham, especially on your first real case. You gave the informant your food money; you'd just have to eat old cobs this week. The halfling told you that he had seen the gnome staggering down the main road. In fact, he had started to follow him, figuring he was an easy mark. Well, evidently someone else had figured that too. A couple of very large humans stepped out from the shadows and grabbed the gnome, quickly silencing any yelps with a nasty blow to the head. The halfling claimed that he had followed the two humans, carrying the unconscious gnome, to the "good side of town". Once they reached the areas where the most affluent merchants and high-ranking city officials lived, however, the rogue had to back off. "If even one city guard saw me within five block of one of those houses, I'd be in jail for a month, just on suspicion charges." You reported back to Sham again.

"Shitty Offishalsh, huh? Dish might get dyeshee. You bettuh let me take it from hea." You offered to help, but Sham said that he had some "shpeshal shorshes" that he needed to talk to by himself. You saw him the next day. He looked sort of on edge. When you asked him about the case he looked around nervously and said, "Forget about it, kid. We're off the cashe. Cashe closhed." He quickly drew the curtains closed. When you pressed him on it, he had no explanation. Just that you should forget all about it. You were rather confused and upset, and mad at Sham. Didn't he want to know what happened? And what about poor Keya? You quit working for him shortly thereafter.

You soon ran into a dirty looking human on the street, carrying a sign that read, 'The end of the world is near. Save yourselves from impending doom.' You were curious. Was the world really in danger of ending? And, if so, how could anyone save himself? You approached the smelly man.

"It's not too late! You can be saved!" he screamed at you.

"What do you mean?" you asked. "What is going to happen?"

"Terrible things! The blackness will cover the land! Armies of demons, destroying the cities! The end of the world, it is coming, sooner that you think!" he raved, eyes wide.

"When will this happen?" you asked.

"Soon! Oh, so soon! You must save yourself!" he commanded.

"How do you know this?" you said skeptically.

He looked around quickly, as if not to get caught. He then produced a brown shred of paper from a grungy pocket and slowly opened it, showing it to you. Although it was aged and torn, you managed to decipher some words.

The man snatched the soiled paper away before you could read more. "This is how I know", he growled, defensively. "Only the Green Lord can save us. The rest are doomed! Doomed, I say!" You backed away from him. That note was pretty scary, if it was true. But with the state of this man's mind, perhaps he had written it himself. You thought that the 'Green Lord' might be Osiris, the nature god, but who was the sword-maker, and how did the crazy man know that this was going to happen soon? ....

With your background in investigation, and your fairly good writing skills, you soon found a job at the city paper, the East Lansing Gazette. At first you were assigned to the sportswriting staff, but that didn't seem to work out so well. You knew little about sports, and although the blood bowl games seemed interesting, they just never held enough secrets for you. Also, you didn't really get along with the Mad Dwarf, another sportswriter, who was clearly insane. Eventually, they moved you over to your true loves, politics and gossip. The topics for your first articles were fairly mundane, but you managed to make them spicy enough that a small following of readers began to develop. You got bigger stories, like the illegal funding of the East Lansing State University recreation center, the Scroll Merchants' Message Spell Scandal, and the Great Orc Mead Tax Mistake. This last one was what earned you spot on the Great Vault Misappropriation Reporting Team.

This crack team of reporters consisted of yourself, Brek Yumey, a dwarf (not mad, he had specialty in structures, and disaster reporting), and a half-elf, Senidar Jhin (specialty in theft reporting). The three of you were assigned to this case soon after it broke, about three years ago. Halfway through each Pooh-bah's reign, there was an inspection done to the collection vault for the Hunt. Past hunted items, which had been gathered, and placed in the great vault, were itemized, inspected and checked for any status changes. The independent accounting firm of Melsko, Melsko, Melsko, Melsko and Hermmish found no improprieties, but soon after their report was made public, a reliable source tipped-off your paper to the fact that certain monies had been supplied to the firm by an unknown, but high level, source. Your paper reported confirmation of these transactions, when Mr. Melsko and Mr. Melsko were discovered trying to purchase the rights to Longthorpe Industries, a breakfast food magnate, using various loopholes in tax laws to 'launder' their money. As the story grew, there was supposedly a confession by Mr. Melsko regarding Vault misappropriations, but soon thereafter, Mr. Melsko and Mr. Melsko were found dead their jail cells, and the 'confession' was 'lost' by the authorities. Mr. Melsko, Mr. Melsko and Hermmish were nowhere to be found.

A new inspection team found that various Hunted Items, or portions of Hunted Items, which should have been in the Great Vault, were missing. The news shocked the Empire. Not only was this a serious infraction of the East Lansing by-laws, but the nature of the items stored there had serious implications for the safety of East Lansing society. This was now very serious business. It eventually led to the formation of the Great Vault Misappropriations Task Force, consisting of a diverse collection of local respected figures, representing various political parties, some with no political allegiance at all. The group spent weeks pouring over records, questioning various people, returning again and again to the Great Vault... and you got to cover it all. That's when the explosion occurred.

It was on one of many trips back to the Great Vault for the Investigation Team. Noted Sensory Therapist Philo Fingerbender, a member of the Team, requested looking at the scrapings taken from Isaac's Bar once more (or, at least, the remains of where the scrapings were taken from). He was concerned about the nature of the instrument that could have made such scrapings. Isaac's Bar, as everyone knows, is made from Vodkasium Martinium, the hardest substance known in the multiverse. If only one could find an instrument which could have made those scrapings... it was unlikely that there were many such instruments. The Task Force was attempting to examine the markings left by such an instrument, when it happened.

You were standing just outside the Vault entryway (none except the Pooh-bah, the regular investigators, and the special Task Force could actually enter the Vault), when you were shaken by a loud, echoing boom and a short, but distinct sound. Screams. Then, silence, and a gout of flame emerging from the Vault followed by wafts of smoke. You didn't think, and ran directly into the Vault. Not only was this highly illegal, but running into the smoky flames and flying debris of an explosion was not something the normally apprehensive Sourdough did (you thought this to yourself while running into the smoke). But there were several people in there, perhaps bleeding to death.

It was a mess. Blood and bodies, glass and a bluish liquid spattered everywhere. Only one figure seemed intact, with any hope of survival. It was Jenkins the Arch-Mage. It was not surprising that he could survive this. He was, after all, perhaps the most powerful mage in the city, heck, maybe even in the whole Empire of East Lansing. You cleared some debris and got over to him. He was unconscious, but you noticed a significant amount of the blue liquid dripping down the walls, pooling on the floor, and starting to flow in your direction. You hefted the arch-mage over your shoulder, checked to be sure you didn't miss anyone else who also could be saved, and fled the oozing liquid.

Once outside, you were cheered by a small crowd that had gathered. Your friends at the newspaper emphasized your heroics in the next day's morning edition, despite your attempts to downplay the situation. Various theories were put forth to explain what had happened that day. Some anti-Vault group called NO-DOPE said that accidents like this might just be the beginning of the problems that could result from stockpiling so many magical artifacts in one place. Your old friends K.A.G.O.K. actually claimed responsibility for the act, but you knew that they weren't competent enough to pull this one off. If the explosion weren't an accident, the most logical suspect would be whoever misappropriated the items in the first place. But with all of those potions, magical items and ichors in there, who knows what caused it.

About two months after the explosion, you went to visit Jenkins at the East Lansing State medical facility. Up until that point he was not allowed visitors. Evidently, he was now strong enough to speak, and had requested to thank the man who pulled him from the wreckage. You had a long talk about many things. It seems that Jenkins had studied with your one-time mentor, Damon the Bringer, long before you had met the jack-of-all-trades. You knew Damon taught magic, that's how you learned, but you had never seen him cast a spell. And now you find out he taught an arch-mage! Well, mage anyway. Jenkins mind had been crippled as well as his body by the mysterious blue ooze in the explosion. He was now no longer an arch-mage. At least he had partially recovered his abilities and could still cast some of his spells. You talked with him about the Vault a bit (off the record, of course). Jenkins confided in you that he had his own theory about the explosion. He blamed former Pooh-bah Hammerhan. He confided that clues leading Hammerhan's way in the investigation were somehow stolen or 'lost'. Jenkins explained how he and Hammerhan had always been at odds, especially once Jenkins started working with Pharondondalae. Maybe this bitter enmity clouded Jenkins' judgement, or maybe Jenkins was right, and it was Hammerhan who was to blame. By all accounts, Hammerhan had been acting strange lately; missing Council meetings, staying out of the public spotlight and spending a lot of time at his summer home in Whippany. Maybe your old friend Sham was on the case.

About five months after the explosion as if things couldn't be worse for the investigation, 'Burly-gate' occurred. An intern in the Hall of Records named Pluggle Burly was caught shredding Vault access records. At this point, the investigation had completely stalled. No investigators, and now some key clues were gone. Your paper pulled your team from the story. After all, there was no story left to write.

You hopped from story to story for a while but things were different. You were constantly thinking about Jenkins, the Vault and Hammerhan. But the story was out of the media. You couldn't afford the time to research a story that no one was even assigned to. You met with Jenkins once and a while and he seemed to be recovering nicely, as far as you could tell. Eventually, as the Great Hunt neared, the focus on both the Great Vault and potential Pooh-bahs grew. You wondered what it would be like to be on a Hunt Team. You heard that Namor had another trick up his sleeve this time, something about a margoyle.

Then, on a recent visit, Jenkins the Mage asked you the question. "Sourdough, how would you like to be on a Hunt Team?"

You thought for a second and said, "You don't mean Namor's Team, The Air League, do you?" After all, you weren't sure how you would feel if you were on a team with a margoyle.

"No, no", laughed Jenkins, smiling. It was one of the few times you had seen him smile. "Pharondonderama. With me, Big John Drott and some other good Hunters."

It didn't take long for you to decide.