I awaken, as most mornings, to a boot in the belly and a powerful thirst. “Ale,” I mutter. “By the blue head of the dragon, give me Ale.”
I get another kick instead.
The gutter isn’t my first choice for slumber. Some nights, I’m under a wagon; some nights, in a barn. I even, on rare occasion, wake with a wench – but I’m usually too drunk to choose where I sleep. As I have been since my excommunication from the Church of Tymora. If I’m lucky – I always am – enough ale keeps the dreams at bay.
I left the Church, but Tymora, it seems, never left me.
My father was a brewer, and my mother ran a tavern in Dranseri’s Fourth Ward. The night I was conceived, she said, an angel visited her dreams; she always wanted more than my father’s life for me. As luck would have it – and luck always has her way – Tymora’s temple Fortune’s Will was across the street from our tavern, and I was apprenticed to the priesthood as soon as they would have me. “The god doesn’t matter,” mother said with a barmaid’s insight. “They’re really all the same.”
Before I was apprenticed, my father taught me to make, and to love, ale. He gave me a set of brewer’s tools that I still carry, prophetically saying “every man should have an honest craft.”
My dreams began soon after I moved into Fortune’s Will.
High Luckbringer Daevemon Songsteel took an interest in me upon learning of my dreams, and when he saw me unconsciously manifest Light, identified the celestial touch. He trained me in the divine magics as a cleric.
I learned more than Songsteel intended, and one feast day took the pulpit after too much holy wine. My prepared homily forgotten, I gave the assembled parishioners an accounting of how their Luckbringer rigged their matches and spent their contributions, leaving out no salacious detail. The people, who faithfully sacrificed from meager harvests in hopes of better luck going forward, were furious. As was the Luckbringer.
Now the people of my home call me “hero,” which, with a few coins, might buy me an ale if I could return. Since then I have wandered, hiding where I could, sleeping where I could, and helping, where I could. Expelled from Fortune’s Will and angry, I renounced Tymora and her divine magic and turned to study of the old ways. Tiamat’s magics are strong – her name is the strongest magic I know.
Her name, uttered forcefully, will send my tormentor running – once I can stand upright to pronounce it. And her name will keep others, and their questions, away as I shuffle along the Queen’s Road to nowhere. Songsteel will not find me. Tymora, it seems, is still watching.
UNOMAHA D&D 