Annals of Latter Days

[Caillou]

I was born a broodless sometime around 2303 in one of the many public communal hatcheries that arose during and before the time of this accounting. With the new capital of Cabilis administered by the autocrat Vekin in such disrepair even these meagre accomodations afforded some of the more clever of us a certain imagination of scavenging. First and formost it to came pickpocketing but even the quickest fingered eventually lose the favor of Cazic and face the Crusaders. For the moment it was easier to run schemes with a couple other broodless on slow of wit Haggle Baron clerks. These ventures allowed me to move from the commune out into West Cabilis just west of the Alchemist. Eventually our scheming expanded into the other disitricts and so did my pride. Such that I pondered and then planned something that had burned in my mind for some time.

I must confess that many of the heists included manuscripts of our people. At first I cared little for their meaning. In those days what amounted to learning of letters, numbers, and rhetoric amounted to little more than rote memorization administered with swift violence for failure. I will not dally with the ramifications of that particular institution which still persists suffice to say the active literate was and is a rarity. On a haul like any other a insteresting find emerged, not a musty treatise on this dark art or that religious interpretation. No this was something I had never seen before a book of imaginary adventures acted on by a ancient guild of much renown. This tome dated to the golden age of the Sebilisian Empire possibly during the reign of Atrebe. I was young then and thus a journey of a Swifttail from novice to disciple was evolutionary to my path going forward. Until then simply put I had never encountered a fun and engaging read. Looking back now after so many long years I must confess my ignorance in the literate arts however from then on I discovered many a world in manuscripts or rarely tomes. So much so that I amassed a small library of my own sacrificing much gold for knowledge. However gold can only buy you so many things and eventually Cazic inspired acts reveal themselves to greater destiny.

Of the active literate those guilds with any meaningful numbers were the Tower of Death and to a lesser but deeper extent the Court of Pain. While the Tower vastly outnumbered the Court in number they lacked the archive that had been kept by the Swifttails and even preseved during the end days. Thanks to Disciple and soon to be Grandmaster Glox the archives were removed from Sebilis before it's fall. He later reformed the Swifttails as a direct continuation of the previous order via his gravitas as a disciple of the first Grandmaster Tynn. The arts plodded by the Tower interested me not as it mainly consisted of modern research only understood by other members. However Glox's trove would be a chance of a lifetime. Days and hours I watched, observed, and learned the routines of Court. Atop the roof of the Haggle Baron there is a great vantage point for such that youth thinks it finds. Finally I notice a pattern that could be exploited deep into the night. Even Grandmasters must sleep but I would have scant time to even read what I could take. Even with this uncertainty bubbling I resolved to attempt it personally something I had not done in many a long moon. At the appointed hour I carefully scaled the back wall of the compund having explored and found numerous footholds before. So silent I thought I was but of course what chance does a communal broodless have against the Grandmaster himself I took no more than 6 steps before Glox in the blink of an eye went from laying down to submitting me onto the ground. "A rarity these days" he remarks eyeing me with sympathy and something ese I had never seen before. "There is only one reason that I think probable for anyone to scope a location for 8 days straight and then try to slip into the Court in my meditative phase. You were after secrets weren't you brood? By the look of you you're rare even among the rare." I sat silent as he released me from a hold I would learn in time. After a time that now seems to stretch an age I simply answered, "Yes".

In reply he with a strange mixture of solemnity tinged by hope spoke my fate, "Welcome to the Order of the Swifttails"

End Book I