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Fantasy -> EpicAleteo the Stern of Bragary Castle Town was a fool. Worse, he was a powerful fool.The twin sister gods of Dusk and Dawn were awfully, tremendously, and insufferably bored. Yes, there was a plague in the territory, and there was a war elsewhere. True, it might yet come to these lands; but there had been many plagues and many wars before. Whatever the history books do say, never was there an age of peace. Yet the two gods had witnessed all these things too many times. Always mankind recovered too quickly. So there was no fun in that, they thought. Whence they felt that something truly disastrous was needed. Past disasters were too fleeting and some special ingredient was now needed.It was Sister Dusk who suggested, and Sister Dawn who agreed, that the best way to make entertainment was to shower endless luck upon the greatest fool they could find in the span of a fortnight. The only constraint was that The Chosen One had to be not actually stupid, merely exceptionally lacking in wisdom. Well, they found him.Aleteo the Cattle Rustler, with seventy two moles on his ass, became Aleteo the Stern, famous Castellan of Bragary, after his merry band of the rabble was attacked by the garrison during one of their raids, and this time, they miraculously not only defeated the soldiers, but drove them out, and took the walls, and then the castle, then the high keep; no arrow missed and no sword blow fail to cut. The seventy two moles became widely known as a proof of his lucky fate, for they signified the seventy two stars, which blinked every night as if they were so many eyes.He could throw a stone and it would knock down a charging horse. He would stand still and no bolt would hit him, though a hundred were fired. Yet his own musket, which he slowly reloaded, would drop one enemy after another. A shallow wound from him would prove fatal. The conquest of the Southern Coast had begun.The Two Gods sought entertainment and entertainment they well received. Nothing is so great a disaster to mankind as power in the hands of the unworthy.To make sure things happened, they gave their unlimited power to the service of one other. In the next season, they appeared in the flames of the supper of Orsinie the Slayer. The Two Gods each rose to enormous size, towering over the pines, such that they would be believed, and tasked her with slaying this vile Bandit Lord, who was then hungrily conquering the South Coast. They told her this was obviously a powerful mage, therefore her services were urgently required. They blessed her with tremendous powers, even beyond her own, which were formidable to begin with, since her master did not take weak apprentices. Finally, they promised her vast spoils. They made the gold glitter in her mind. What the Bandit Lord had stolen, once he was safely dead, could all be hers, after all.Now, they had chosen this champion well too, for Orsinie, of course, was a vampire. Beyond that, she was a novice member of the Guild of Necromancers. She was, indeed, the First Apprentice to Snarl the Hag, Crone Necromancer and the Grand Soul Collector of the Guild. Suffice to say, a second conquering force began to be assembled.So began the Fifth Troubles of the South Coast.In the midst of this, in the village of West Loute, Norbert Flout, the second son of the grain merchant, had finally acquired a Soul Book. Moreover, it was what he wanted. The soul book of a mage; and he began to learn spell after spell... The Troubles would provide much place where such spells could be profitably tested...