As much as I want to regale you with tales of raucous hedonism, thrilling fights, darkest dungeons, and all the naughty things that the bards write about in their songs (myself included, of course), I’d like to instead begin at... the beginning.

A little over fifty years ago (it really has been that long, hasn’t it?), a small little boy named William was born in a small little fishing and farming village named Martin’s Rest. The eponymous Martin was a minor lord that, a few hundred years ago, came to the area at the behest of his King in order to bring down an upstart’s rebellion. Martin ended up loving the place so much that he decided to move his castle here. And as so often happens, a village sprang up around the castle.

I don’t remember most of my time at Martin’s Rest. I was a child of four when I left there, and I’ve never been back. My mother passed away when I was four, my father was nowhere to be found, and none of the townsfolk stepped in to raise me. The best they could do was arrange to have me transported to the orphanage at Land’s End, one of the biggest cities in our whole wide world. A part of me, one of the parts I don’t like very much, has always harbored a grudge, has always wanted to show up to Martin’s Rest with great big bags stuffed with gold, to rub it in their faces, to show them that the boy they abandoned was (at least at one point in time) one of the biggest and greatest musical acts in all the land. I’ve never done it, but I’d be lying if I told you that the desire has faded throughout the decades.

That feeling of being abandoned... it’s the feeling I hate most in the world. I don’t know why my father wasn’t there to help raise me. I don’t know why or how my mother died. I don’t know why an entire village thought the best way to help me would be to send me away. I don’t even think I really want to know, not at this point, not after all these years. Martin’s Rest was where I was born, but it was never my home.

Land’s End is where my story truly began. Even to this day, if you were to cut me open, I would bleed Land’s End. My upbringing as an orphan in one of the biggest cities in the world went about as well as you would expect. Every orphan has their tale of hardship. And as much as I like to hear myself talk, I hate even more the idea of being unoriginal.

So, for one of the very few times in my life, I will be brief: there were many times I barely survived living in Land’s End. I’ve been beaten, bullied, stepped over, spat on, starved, and worse. I was in more than a few fights, I didn’t win all of them, and I barely made it out of a few. But Land’s End taught me everything I needed to know.

And it wasn’t all bad. There were fights, yes, but there was also frivolity. There were shenanigans and tomfoolery almost every night. Yes, perhaps I was beaten within an inch of my life a handful of times, but I’ve also come close to dying of laughter many more times.

And that was my life, for a time. For eight years, in fact. Until the time I was 12, I had no greater ambition than to spend my days scrounging up whatever money I could come across (usually by begging, borrowing, or stealing) and then spending my nights burning through that same coin. I learned a lot about the way of the world, and how things really work, and I grew up very quickly. I considered myself a grown man when I turned 12, or at least, when I think I did. There’s no record of my birth, but at least there is a record of when I was accepted into the orphanage. So I consider that my birthday.

And so, on the day I turned 12, not only did I decide that I was now a man, but I also decided that now was the time to start making some real money. I was no stranger to stealing, but to best avoid the stockade and the dungeon, I was the “snatch and run” kind of thief. I never stole anything that couldn’t fit in one hand: an apple, a loaf of bread, a handful of copper, and rarely, a few silver coins.

And never gold. Gold was too risky: a baker may chase you with a rolling pin if you steal his bread, but steal a man’s gold, and very often you’re playing with your life.

But I was a man now, or at least, that’s what I told myself. And men take risks. And with great risk comes even greater reward. But who to target? The nobility had all the gold, but they kept it safe under lock and key, behind high walls, with men on those walls that had spears and swords and shields. I wasn’t going to steal from the common folk, I was one of them after all, and our lives were hard enough. Merchants were a possibility, I’d certainly stolen from them before, but they had their own protections in place. And there was always the possibility that they would hire wandering adventurers to hunt me down if I stole anything that couldn’t be easily replaced.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

And then the thought occurred to me: why not adventurers? Many of them are so focused on acquiring loot that they forget to keep proper track of it when they actually do manage to procure it. I’d also heard that the only thing an adventurer likes more than getting gold is spending it. And how many adventurers do you know that keep careful track of every single item in their inventory, every coin, every trinket, every bauble?

Certainly, some adventurers were indeed that cautious and careful. I simply avoided those types.

I set my sights on the adventurers that wouldn’t notice a dozen or so gold going missing and would likely assume they had just spent it on a night’s revelry. And rather than target single individuals, I decided I would focus on groups. I believed that dedicated adventuring parties would be much more likely to pool their resources, and much more likely to lose track of what belonged to who and who spent how much and where they spent it. I thought I was so clever for figuring all of this out. And I promised myself I would be just as clever in figuring out who to target.

And so I eventually decided on a band of five: a Dwarven Bard, a Half-Ogre Barbarian, a Tiefling Rogue, a Human Monk, and a Dragonborn Wizard. All of them appeared to be strong, fit, and able. All of them seemed to be able to afford anything they wanted. But the Bard spent all of his time trying to sing his way into the bedchambers of every woman in town. The Half-Ogre had taken one too many blows to the head throughout the years and suffered from frequent migraines, so he spent most of his time drunk or in a semi-drugged haze. The Tiefling would disappear for hours, going who knows where, returning who knows when. The Monk was old and blind. And the Wizard was so focused on his weighty tomes of forbidden knowledge that he had almost zero spatial awareness and was constantly forgetting what the party was doing, where they were going, where they had been... you get the picture.

One night, I decided the time was right to put my plan into action. The Bard was at the local tavern, the Tiefling had disappeared again, and the Wizard was at the local Mage’s Guild in a heated debate on magical matters. Only the Monk and Barbarian remained to guard the group’s camp. The Barbarian was asleep, and the Monk appeared to be meditating. Quick as a panther, silent as a shadow, deadly as an unseen blade, I crept into the party’s camp, snuck into the tent that held all the party’s inventory, and began filling my pockets. I didn’t take every piece of gold, silver, and jewelry. But what I did take would have kept me living what I considered “the good life” for quite some time. And I never made a sound. It was the perfect heist, executed perfectly.

So you can imagine my surprise when, after only thirty seconds of careful looting, I heard a voice behind me say, “Stop what you are doing and empty your pockets. I promise that you will not be harmed. I will only turn you over to the town guard.”

I wish I could say the first thing I did was turn around and spring into action. But I was 12. The first thing I did was nearly soil myself.

But once I managed the Herculean effort of not losing control over my bowels, I did indeed turn around and put my fists up to defend myself. I hadn’t brought a weapon. I never used them, not in all my many misadventures in Land’s End. Weapons drew too much attention, and punishments increased exponentially when the loss of life was a possibility. And thanks to the vanities of youth and the narcissism that has plagued me my entire life, I considered myself a pretty damn good fighter.

And so I turned to the blind, elderly Monk, and in my most intimidating voice, I said to him, “Let me go in peace and all you’ll lose is a few days’ plunder. Don’t make me hurt you, old geezer.”

My voice cracked halfway through the challenge. The monk smiled, nodded, and went into a fighting stance. He beckoned me forward and told me, “Come then, young one. If you are decided. I promise you that the lesson will only be as harsh as it needs to be.”

I knew the sounds of battle would likely wake up the Half-Orc, so I resolved to end things quickly. I also resolved to not pull any punches, even though the Monk was old and blind. “He’s an adventurer,” I thought. “He’ll be fine if I don’t hold back.” And so I willed myself forward and began the attack with the combination that had won me most of my fights up until then: two quick jabs and a big right hook.

The first two punches landed hard and landed clean, much to my surprise and delight. “I’m really doing it,” I thought to myself. “I’m really fighting an adventurer and winning.” I was too drunk off my own success to notice that all it took was two punches to break my hand, and that hitting the Monk felt like hitting a brick wall.

My efforts came to a quick and resounding end when I attempted the big haymaker. The Monk moved so fast that he appeared to me only as a blur. Before I could register what was happening, he had grabbed my wrist, turned his back towards me, and used my momentum against me, flipping me over himself and depositing me on the ground with a resounding thud. It knocked all the breath out of my lungs, and at the time it felt like he had broken every rib I had. And he wasn’t done.

Still holding my wrist, he effortlessly picked me up one-handed, completely deadlifting me, putting me back on my feet, facing away from him. He then jumped and latched himself onto my back like a spider, his legs coiling around my waist like a snake. His arms, vice-like and deadly, trapped me in a headlock. His grip tightened around my neck and my senses left me. I didn’t have any time to defend myself. I didn’t even have any time to beg for mercy. I had just enough time to understand what was happening to me, to really understand how badly I had miscalculated. And then there was darkness.

I woke up in a confused, delirious daze, tied firmly to a chair, with the entire adventuring party looming over me. The Wizard noticed me coming back to life and immediately raised his gnarled oak staff. Bone-chilling, ice-cold water sprang forth from its tip, drenching me from balls to brainstem and shocking me back to my senses. The Tiefling drew a strange dagger, covered in arcane runes, with colors all along the blade that would shift and change in the light and shadow, appearing blood red one moment, sickly green the next. She approached me, held the dagger to my throat, and said, “Let’s begin.”

And so we did.