Story:

Chapter 1 – The Apprentices

Three years ago I came to be employed as the assistant of famed troubadour Skira Mathoren.  Skira was known as a prominent member of the Green Arrow Path Company, whose adventures he had extensively chronicled.  In those days, I was not his apprentice but merely a helper, a researcher, a scribe, and sometimes a housekeeper. 

Skira Mathoren, a Troubadour of the 9th Circle and a former Questor of Astendar, was one of a handful of members of the Company who still inhabited the Citadel at Erengazor on at least a periodic basis.  The Green Arrow Path had been quasi-dormant for the last two decades, but had not officially disbanded.  A few members still acted on behalf of the Company, travelling here and there through Barsaive to address the petitions of those who still asked for its help. 

Skira had been trying for twenty years to compile the history of the Green Arrow Path to the level of exhaustiveness he felt was called for.  He was a gregarious sort, and in truth, one of the reasons that he hadn’t finished the book yet is that he kept travelling on riverboats every year – ostensibly to do "research" but, I suspect, frequently just to get out.  He was considered something of a leader in the community (as much as a male T'skrang can be) and was frequently consulted on such things as trade agreements with far off places.

Two other members of the Green Arrow Path were in near-permanent residence at the Citadel.  The most august was Arbrath, a Troll Wizard of the 12th Circle who was the last founding member to remain at the Citadel.  She was a reclusive scholar, and although she rarely travelled, we could go weeks without seeing her. 

The other most hidebound inhabitant of the Citadel was B'gyrh Tanis, an Ork Thief of the 7th Circle.  B'gyrh had not always been so sedentary, but in her last foray into the outside world, just over a year ago, she had lost a leg.  Since then, she had curtailed her travels.

Soon after she had suffered that crippling wound and returned to relative (if precarious) health, B'gyrh left again, this time going only as far as Fallam downriver.  She came back with a scraggly young Human male by the name of Eldan, and announced that he was to become her apprentice.  Eldan was a strange mixture of self-confidence and inexperience, of cynicism and enthusiasm.

Within weeks, Skira offered me the chance to become his apprentice, and Arbrath acquired an apprentice of her own, a young Cathan Human called Ka'El who proved talented and studious, if sometimes lackadaisical.  The Green Arrow Path was giving faint signs of life once again, if much dimmed compared to its glorious past.

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