Players Guide to Adventures in Valerick

A humble welcome to you all, the bold, the brave, the foolish, the few! A humble welcome indeed. All of Valerick awaits you, humble few. Though whom do they wait for, hmmm? What sort of story, what sort of legacy, what sort of impact do you seek? What stories do you wish told long after you are gone. You wish to join the stature of others so bold, so cunning, so brave, so foolish, so lucky, so vicious, so courageous, so heroic, or so dastardly? You wish to become one of the Exemplari, those of whom songs are sung and tales are told!

Those for whom sitting at home with a simple life, family, and children, is not quite enough. Those whom seek more, even if it means a lesser quantity of life, they seek quality. Fame, fortune, glory, knowledge, exploration, excitement! The wages of Exemplari, of adventurers. A relic of a bygone age many would say now. Bah! BAH I tell you! Yes we are in a new age, a more modern age. Steam engines, Sky-Ships, firearms, new technologies great and small. Yet much of our homelands remain shrouded in mystery and loss. Darkness clings to the wild places, and behind it, through the beasts and monsters that may threaten you, seek to eat you, bleed you, take you, slay you, awaits treasures you could not imagine in your wildest dreams. Forgotten relics of bygone ages, hordes of beasts most ancient and powerful, treasures collected over millenia or more! Knowledge of ages long gone, and forgotten places that were once hearts of our civilization. Wealth of many kinds is there for the taking! So again, Bah, Bah I say. Adventurers, Exemplari, those whom choose the roads, the risks, and the tales, are not a relic of a bygone age. They are a necessity, as necessary to Valerick as blood is to a human body. My only regret, younglings, is that I ever foolishly retired.

For now I, Antolis Marcus, Vanquisher of Bliza'rchrion, Abomination of Ignavia, well I will die an old man's death, laid low in my bed, slowly, painfully unable to breath, my lungs failing me. Ahhh I do not regret my children, nor having a family....yet part of me wishes this was not the trade off. If I could give you any advice younglings, it would be but three tidbits.

First off, surround yourself with competent allies and friends. Your companions of choice will oft be the difference between life and death. Make sure you trust them, implicitly and completely. Secondly, if you truly seek to become one of the Exemplari, one those fool story-weavers and tale spinners and song singers draw inspiration for all manner of their wonderfully fun and foolish performances from, leave no lead unfollowed, no stone unturned, no thread untugged. You never know where the makings of greatness will be found, and sometimes they will be found in the most unlikely places. Finally, don't retire. If you've the spark, you've the spark, and I can see it in your eyes. You all do. You don't retire as long as that spark is within you. Trust this old man now, you do not wish to die this way. Better to die beside your friends, fighting for each other and on one last heroic adventure, than old and forgotten, struggling to breath in a bed."

Antolis Marcus, once famed knight to his last crop of squires. He would die that very winter, exactly as he said he would. His only true regret.