Honor Among Thieves

The Book of Vishni’s Exile: Prologue

Not long ago, in a land of nightmare and dreams, afairy maiden committed an unspeakable crime. In her defense, itseemed like a good idea at the time.

She received the usual sentence: Exile to the mortalrealm until she could record enough entertaining tales to balancethe scales of fairy justice.

Alas, her arrival in the land called Sevrin cametwenty years too late. Had she been caught in some earlier bit ofmischief, she might have witnessed the fall of a powerful sorcererin a summer of bloodshed, heroism, and, from all accounts, highlyentertaining explosions.

To her dismay, the land into which she came borelittle resemblance to the realms described in fairy tales ofold.

Magic was dead, or so the adepts who now ruledSevrin

would have people believe. The old races hadwithdrawn deep into the forests, the seas, and the stone-so deepthat many mortals believed them gone beyond recall.

And what did this reborn land offer in return?

Alchemy, an Art that sought new names for thingsthat always were and always would be.

The greatest of these alchemists, the adepts, didnot stop at philosophy. They declared the gods dead and embarkedupon their own frenzy of creation.

They created potions that healed or destroyed on agrand scale. They created new weapons, useful machines, clevertoys, and wondrous metal creatures that owed their semblance oflife to clockwork and alchemical mysteries.

These innovations brought wealth and fame to theadepts, who shared their fortune with those they ruled. As aresult, the land was prosperous and peaceful, the people ascomplacent as cows.

In short, it was no fit place for a fairy.

Without conflict there can be no story. If the exilehoped to return to the fey realm, she would have to find trouble orcreate it.

Fortunately, there were in this land mortals whorefused the new ways, and members of the old races who were notcontent to fade into legend.

The fairy found them. And she soon learned, to herperil and delight, that neither adepts nor rogues were everythingthey believed themselves to be, nor were they all they hoped tobecome.

This was promising indeed. As every storysingerknows, the more brightly a hero shines, the darker the shadow hemight someday cast.