1. The Girl Beyond the Garden Wall
There are nine great cities in the Allied Regions of Phaen. Freewater is not one of them. Our story began just outside that smaller city, in a garden, with a girl who was supposed to be coming in for dinner.
Ayla Willow lived between the city and her family's manor, where the forest began just beyond the hedge. Fernum, her father, is a politician; her mother is Argonia. Both were human, while their daughter had blue hair and the pointed ears of a half-elf. To Ayla, they were simply her parents.
At nine years old, she felt something strange coming from the trees: fear and pain, though she had heard no sound. She followed it and found a rabbit caught in a snare.
Ayla freed the creature and watched it disappear into the undergrowth. She returned to dinner wondering how she had known it was there. The forest had always felt close to her. For the first time, it seemed to have called for help.
On her eighteenth birthday, Fernum and Argonia told her the truth. Their housekeeper, Emma, had found her as a baby in those same woods, with a staff and a ring marked with her name. They had adopted her and kept the objects until she was old enough to receive them.
When Ayla took the staff and ring, the windows flew open.
Wind filled the dining room, carrying leaves around the table. Ayla suddenly felt the living world with startling clarity. Her parents, after their initial astonishment, were delighted. Their daughter could wield magic.
But who had left her in the forest, and why? Ayla set out for Fendry, hoping its libraries might hold an answer. She would find that getting into a great library required rather more than knowing where it stood.
2. A Star Comes Crashing Down
Canton, one of Phaen's great cities, was famous for its theatres. Kai’thos Kah’xor had grown up in them, part of a family of red-skinned tiefling actors: his parents, Kah’varis and Valena, and his younger sister, Sirith. Where Sirith struggled for recognition, Kai’thos became a star of the Opera Eclese, gifted and rather aware of it.
After a performance of Deonica, shouting drew him and Sirith to their parents' dressing room. There stood an armoured woman called Will, furious about a broken bargain. She hurled their parents against the wall, then caught Sirith in violet magic and dragged her towards a portal. Will demanded Kai’thos's life as the price of saving his sister.
Kai’thos seized Sirith, and the portal dragged him in as well. He lost his grip. Somewhere ahead, Will and Sirith disappeared. In the distance he saw the spires of an unknown city, but the magic surrounding him was killing him. He knew he could not stay.
He fixed his thoughts on the dressing room and forced himself back. He escaped the portal, though the wild magic that had filled him came with him. It surged beyond his control. Hoping to spare the people backstage, he ran into the empty auditorium.
The explosion destroyed much of the theatre. It was not quite empty: a steward had been badly hurt and pointed towards Kai’thos when help arrived. His father smuggled him away, provided a glyph for sending messages, and sent him out of Canton on horseback.
At an inn, Kai’thos curled up on his bed, grieving for Sirith. Another surge brought a fleeting vision of her, motionless and seemingly encased in crystal somewhere unknown.
Then the window and part of the wall blew outward towards the woods. He fled again. He did not know where the portal's distant spires stood, but Fendry's mages might help him find Sirith—and survive his own magic.
3. The Bride Who Chose the Window
Traditions have a way of outliving the reasons for them. The dragonborn of Andar Abeloth, a mountain once ruled by the dragon Abaloth, had kept rather a lot of theirs.
Auroth Da’ar, daughter of a clan leader, was expected to honour them. Even as a child, she found her own way. When the young dragonborn were told to carve stone dragons for a ceremony, Da’ar spent her time making her rock perfectly round and shiny instead.
The elder reprimanded her. The polishing was excellent. Unfortunately, the assignment had been to make a dragon.
Later, her friend Raptura was married instead of pursuing her wish to train as a warrior. Then Da’ar's own marriage was arranged, to a woman named Pallen. Da’ar wanted a different life.
She arranged a martial polearm dance for the wedding guests, drawing the village away while she waited alone in her bridal chamber. Her dowry was there, including a beautiful amber pendant.
Da’ar took what she could carry and climbed out of the window.
Then she ran down the mountain, laughing as the village fell away behind her. She didn't know where she was going. She hadn't decided what she would do when she got there. And she couldn't remember ever feeling happier.
“I see you.”
The amber pendant began to glow. Da’ar had set out in search of freedom. She had not expected freedom to answer her back.
For two years she travelled, training and helping people, sometimes with rather more force than a rescue required. When she heard that Fendry offered a path to recognition as an adventurer, she went to find it.
4. The Great Mage City of Fendry
Fendry was Phaen's great centre of magic, home to the headquarters of the Great Mage Alliance. So many mages and their creations lived there that its enchanted lights had earned it the nickname City of Lights.
Ayla wanted access to the libraries. Kai’thos needed the help of mages. Both discovered that the doors they needed were closed without credentials. Membership in the General Questing Alliance, a different organisation, offered a way forward. Da’ar joined because it sounded like an excellent place to become a hero.
A gnome clerk assigned the three strangers to one party. Almost immediately, Da’ar broke a chair against the wall as a show of strength. The clerk said little.
Their combat trial took place in a small stone arena behind rippling blue magical walls, against a clay golem.
Ayla struck with her enchanted staff, Kai’thos cast Fire Bolt, and Da’ar brought her weapon down. The golem fell in a single round. Their instructor was impressed.
The party received a magical Questing Tablet to collect proof of completed work. Normally, three quests earned full membership. The clerk, however, had remembered the chair. Their requirement would be three and a half.
They were pointed south towards Cliffwood, but first they went for drinks and shared their stories. Da’ar's account of leaving home was notably brief. She also took a liking to Grol, a cooking ale, and drank directly from a barrel using a pipe pulled from the wall.
By the time they left Fendry together, Ayla still had a past to uncover, Kai’thos a sister to find, and Da’ar a world to see. Their first adventure lay down the road to Cliffwood.