Dangerous Adventures (Part 1)

Separating those great menacing continents were the enormous and tempestuous oceans. Here lurked every manner of leviathan of the great deep. Vast, mysterious, and unexplored, the oceans where the birthing grounds for the massive storms, of that era, that would churn the seas and exhort them into sentient treachery. These maelstroms of wind and rain would inexorably blow towards the landmasses slamming into the coastline with a primordial vengeance.

Dark ominous swells, capped with fluorescent white foam would rise driven by gale force winds that drove them towards a rocky, prehistoric, coast where the waves crash against a huge black boulder strewn beach. Gusts of rain buffeted the cliffs over looking a craggy beachhead. This beachhead is the furthest tip of a spit of land that shelters a busy harbor of an antediluvian kingdom.

Kingdoms at the dawn of civilization were scant and scattered. The rulers of the times were often barbaric and ruthless making stability and prosperity a rare event. However the ruler, of this storm bashed, seaside kingdom of Barshaum, was not the barbaric ogre of his predecessors.

On the contrary this ruler had an absurdly jovial side that was clumsy and misguided. Often times embarrassing his counselors, and diplomats, making their jobs more onerous then necessary, the King literally carried on like a buffoon. However there was one redeeming quality to King Tyst.

Tyst, demonstrated a remarkable affinity for battle. Born to wage war Tyst was a formidable army of one and a hellishly cunning general. Having led his armies to victory against the cannibalistic hordes of Neanderthal barbarians and the parasitical outlaws that fed off the realm of Barshaum, but more importantly Tyst had successfully destroyed the last of the powerful giants on this continent.

Eventually, General, Tyst had a disagreement with reigning King, Sjoui. The disagreement was over Sjoui’s refusal to compensate, Tyst’s troops for their success in destroying the Neanderthal threat that had grown enormous enough to overwhelm, all of, Barshaum by its sheer numbers. In addition General Tyst had insisted on a relaxation on the tax burden of the common class, because Tyst’s father was a commoner.

As has been mentioned, diplomacy and negotiation were not Tyst strong points. Tyst was clueless that he had provoked the wrath of King Sjoui until the royal guard attempted to execute him, right then and there, in the presence of King in the throne room. Tyst single handedly annihilated King Sjoui’s personal guards and finally fell King Sjoui with one fatal blow of his sledgehammer fist. Tyst was a usurper.

Fortunately, King Tyst success on the battlefield compensated for his complete lack of skills as a ruler and diplomat. Luck had befallen him in the way of a Queen.

Queen Phionia, was a natural ruler. Born a commoner Phionia was raised to the throne by the sheer might of King Tyst’s sword.

On returning from a campaign to expunge the last of the giants, King Tyst took it into his head to pillage a farm to feed what was left of his decimated army. Little did Tyst know that the farm, he attempted to plunder, was owned by a man named Xandor. Xandor was notorious for his disrespect of titles and was looked upon as pariah to nobility in general.

Xandor had a daughter, Phionia, who was known almost as much for her extraordinary beauty as for her defiant spirit for fairness. Tyst was confronted by, a angry, Phionia who demanded that Tyst remove him, and his ill-mannered army, from her father’s farm and ransack some other farm, that was more in keeping with the slovenly manner, and filth covered décor of his soldiers.