"Freedale, it’s not the name my momma gave me, but it was the first place I ever called home. I lost that home as surely as I lost the house and everything in it."
"We had many good days in that house, my wife and I. We were just getting started in life; married no more than a year. Yeah we had struggles, but overall those were happy times. Why is it that the happy times are always few and far between?"
"In those days I was a scribe. I made more than an honest living as the mayor’s personal assistant. It was my job to transcribe dictations, and also arrange any and all papers of any real worth. Often times I would be sent to neighboring cities and towns with or for the Mayor. It was one of those trips that forever marked the end of happier times in Freedale."
"The mayor had sent me to Emery. Some of the village delegates had been involved in negotiations with the royal Emerian trade commission, hoping to extend our allotted trade boundaries. I was dispatched to meet with the delegates assemble their report and then deliver it home to the mayor. This kind of mission was all very routine to me it meant 2-3 days in Emery expenses paid, with a nice bonus pay once I returned home. I packed my bags, kissed my wife and boarded a coach for Emery without a second thought."
"What I couldn’t know was that while I jotted down notes about who got to sell copper kettles where; my home was burning."
"It was over. My whole life in Freedale; my whole life in Benitrad; it was over. There was never enough evidence but the rumors suggested that bandits were responsible for the fires; fires which were started all over town. Some even implicated Wanop and his band (who were at the time living in that ghost town of Yole); in the end no one knew, and no one ever truly figured it out."
"I found out later that my wife was pregnant; she didn’t want to tell me until she was sure. I wish that no one would have revealed that little fact to me. It was bad enough that I lost my wife and everything I loved in that fire, but I lost the future too."
"I left Freedale, I was leaving Benitrad, rightly I don’t know what direction I traveled and I don’t know where I was headed. That’s how I accidentally met the man named Ziff."
"Ziff, that’s the only name he ever gave me. He said that he could 'take me far away from it all'. That was all the information I needed. I paid his small fee of 10 gold pieces and accompanied him to his 'private dock'. I believe it was somewhere on the western shore of Benitrad, but the ships that docked there didn’t look like anything local I’d ever seen. I set foot in one of his fancy boats, manned by one of the strangest looking crews I’d ever seen and before I knew it we had set sail. Except we weren’t going out to sea… looking out of a porthole I watched the ground get smaller and smaller as we apparently sailed up into the sky. Eventually the ground disappeared altogether replaced by a gleaming blue and green orb swimming in a sea of stars."
“Whoa there lad!” The dwarven fellow interrupted. “Barkeep! This one’s had enough! When I start hearin of flying boats, then I count my blessins that Moradin gaves us dwarves the proper constitution fer holdin our liquor!” Turning back to the man whose only name was Freedale, the Dwarf was surprised to find an empty barstool instead. “BAH! What in tarnation is a Benitrad anyhow? Sounds like wizard talk but Eliminster himself would likely shake his head… Humans!”
He finished his ale and never gave it another thought.