Once upon a time, in a far off kingdom, there lived a beautiful princess and her two happy parents- the king and queen. One day however, the king was returning from battle in a neighboring kingdom when he was attacked by a demon, who ate his men and spared the king’s life on the condition that he would give up his daughter to the demon in marriage. The frightened king agreed, but when he returned home, he immediately began to close the walls to his kingdom. None were allowed in or out, for fear that the demon might come for his only daughter.

The queen tried to comfort her husband, but paranoia had possessed him. When the good queen was caught trying to escape the kingdom with the princess, a kingdom now in the grips of famines and shortages without trade to neighboring kingdoms, the king had them both locked away in a tall tower on the far edge of the kingdom, in the old forest. Then he searched for a better solution.

Eventually, the king found a powerful dragon. He offered all the treasures if his vault if the dragon could protect his kingdom, and more importantly, his daughter. The dragon agreed. Once he gained access to the vault, the dragon cast a spell and turned the whole kingdom to stone.

“There!” Said the dragon. “Now no harm shall come to your kingdom. As for your daughter, she remains locked in the tower until a hero who is both cunning and brave can best it’s tricks and traps and save her. There she shall remain, ignorant to the passage of time, until a hero arrives. When the princess is we’d and the demon defeated, once more will the kingdom be alive.” And then he turned the king into stone as well, and covered him in crowns and rings and fine sills, for he was the crown jewel of the dragon’s new horde.

And so the princess continued to live in the tower, ignorant to the passage of time, awaiting her hero.

That’s what the books say, at least. But it wasn’t so. At first she was though. But she was a clever princess, and knew something was amiss. For one thing, her mother was a statue. Also, every morning the tower was reset back to where it was the morning previous. Kitchen stocked, books reshelved, and her in her bed even if she fell asleep in the library. She began to notice seasons didn’t change as they should. Her hair stopped growing, as did her nails. She counted the mornings after some time and in over six hundred days she never aged. Not physically, at least. But she learned.

Every book. She read every single one. She learned about potions, and math, and swordplay, and farming, and nobility.

TIME UP

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You lay in the dark for a while and focus in on the camp.

It looks like there are two large tents - likely mobile barracks. As you watch, you see there are three men coming in and out of the hole carrying buckets, picks, and shovels. You are unsure if more are down there, but they seem to excavating a large amount of rock and sand at the foot of the mountain. A guard watches them.

One of the large tents has a guard outside of it as well. A few people sit around the fire, talking. In the back of the camp is a smaller tent, really more of a table with a tarp cover, where two figures talk. Could one of them be that man you seek? 

The second large tent is unguarded.

Looking around the perimeter, you see two guards pace back and forth around the perimeter, crossing occasionally. It would be an easy pattern to infiltrate, but the bonfire illuminates the whole camp once you get in. 

You estimate there must be twenty or so people down there - eleven that you can visually confirm, but judging by the size of the tents and the search party sent after you, there must be thirty total personnel - 9 out searching (3 already dead, though) and 21 or so here in the camp still digging.

You still sit several hundred feet above, hidden on the mountain with Buford and a lever-action rifle. With the ammunition you have on you, you can likely kill about half the camp - provided none of your shots miss. Any more and you’ll have to get in close with an axe or sword. You could also continue your climb, or take this intel and try the front door.

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Corbin’s father had been a hero. He had fought on the front lines against the green skins. He had done a tour south in the Merchant Lords deserts. Once, if you believed him, he slew a dragon and saved the king’s life. By the time he was twenty three he had accomplished more in his life than most people achieve in three lifetimes. Maybe thirty.

You can imagine, then, that people were less willing to let it slide when Corbin didn’t sign up to see a tour of duty in His Majesty’s service. No, even though the wars were over thanks to Corbin senior, and no one else was signing up during this time of peace and prosperity, it was big news when Corbin turned thirteen and just went about his life as usual.

Seriously, it was in the news. Eight years ago some gnome had invented a block press, automated by some sort of clockwork golemancy that would aggregate stories sent in by readers then print them out in nice uniform text with tight kerning and easy to read line spacing. Within a week everyone knew of Corbin the Coward.

Luckily, Corbin’s dad never found out. That might have actually been enough to get him to sign up.

Corbin didn’t have much of his father’s abilities. He could sword fight as well as any noble kid could, which is to say great for sport but terrible if the action ever got real. He could ride a horse, but he was far from nimble on his hooves. He was awful with a bow, had no aptitude for magic, and didn’t really care much about history, math, or science. Corbin was, despite his heritage, stunningly average.

And no one would let him get away with it.

All this, the pressure of his elders, the insults of his peers, the shame by his society, was made worse by the fact that Corbin had no one in his life to talk to. When he was ten, his father went missing in action. His mother, a beautiful noble woman with a promising career as a musician and essayist on the topics of astronomy, was stricken with grief. She began to spend much of their fortune on charlatan wizards, trying to scry the whereabouts of her husband. She should have given up after the first found nothing, but she was convinced their magic was too weak, and drove them to poverty collecting relics and magical antiques.

She died in a sanitarium when Corbin was twelve. A year before he was branded a coward and his life was ruined.

The end of the dominion wound up being the source of its strength. The gates had been set up for public use, but still required a technician to calibrate and direct. Attempts were made to hack the gates, but the unique relationship the Technicians had developed with their cyborg bodies and the dominion technology made it impossible.

Technicians were rare compared to other species of the galaxy. They required specialized training and were expensive to produce. Attempts to manufacture false technicians yielded only abominations and failures. The Technicians were part man and part machine, and both could be broken.

A virus began to spread among the technicians. It jumped from gate to gate, infecting its host for several planetary rotations before attacking the nervous and electric systems, over riding their consciousness in most cases and killing them in others. Not all had the constitution to withstand such attacks.

Planets that once relied upon the vast network of trade the dominion had established found themselves cut off. Planets barren of resources or fertility had no way to reach the outside for things their planet no longer produced. Those still connected were now at the mercy of the Guilds, who began to demand large portions of every shipment sent through their gates, and charged exorbitant prices for travel. Intergalactic communication became limited to those the Guilds allowed to talk. A galaxy built on an epoch of unrivaled freedom and exchange was suddenly crippled by its inability to travel and communicate.

Not all the technicians were infected. Some manger to never contract the plague, and others fought it off through strength of will or superior software. The Dominion was swift to launch itself once more into galactic war, and the Guilds responded with their own private armies and fleets. With the risk of enemies able to teleport in at a moments notice, both sides began to dismantle the gates, shifting focus back to the development of space ships and orbital weaponry, and the pursuit of new FTL technology.

But tried and true methods served best in the end. Gates on the Dominion Capitol World all opened at once around the globe. Gates that had been shut off and only activated at randomized intervals hidden behind layers or codes suddenly activated themselves and the trade Guilds’ armies poured through, led by Techromancers, the hacked technicians now controlled by cold hearted AI and guild military. Using their abilities and connection to the Dominion technology, the Techromancers were able to force the activation of the gates and lead a tactical strike on every major city of the Dominion Capitol Planet. The strike was devastating, and soon Techromancers began invading other planets. The Dominion was forced to either dismantle their gates, cutting themselves off and grant the Guold the advantage of instant space travel, or surrender.

The remaining Dominion forces led an exodus to border space, and there they destroyed the gates that brought them there. The known galaxy belonged to the Guilds, and the gate network as well. The Guild reformed under the banner of the Planetary Protectorate and began to rewrite galactic history in their own image.

Before the rise of the galactic dominion, space was a battle field. Empires rose and fell constantly, kings and warlords led billions to their deaths on the name of conquest.

The Dominion changed all that. Utilizing far more advanced tech than the other planetary systems in the Conquests, the Dominion defeated every other leader and absorbed their armies. In a very short amount of time, the dominion had unified the galaxy under one rule.

A key component to their victory was the use of portal technology. By installing port gates on conquered planets, and larger warp gates in orbit, the dominion was able to quickly traverse the galaxy while their enemies trundled about in spaceships and land vehicles. Portal tech also made it possible for near-instant communication across the galaxy, previously limited by the speed of light.

The Galactic Dominion spread, and the galaxy prospered. Access to the gates helped commerce and ideas to grow. Civilization advanced rapidly during the galactic renaissance.

The gates were created and maintained by Technicians, a caste from the dominion home system that had devoted their lives and bodies to the advancement of technology. Walking processors with interfaces installed in their own bodies. Technicians operated the gates and maintained their functionality.

But war is a constant among all races. Greed and power fuel the galaxy. Civil war came from within the dominion.

The beat pulsed through Cor’s step as light played across the crowd. The beat set his pace with slow swagger, matching the bass bump to every footfall. Every hi hat exploded light and color through the room, illuminating the slick mass of moving limbs and neon club wear. Cor pulled the brim of his hat lower and stepped up to the floor, slipping into the dance and disappearing from line of sight to anyone that had followed him.
The beat was slow and steady, but was picking up. Around him the club-goers began to move more spastically. Lights on shirts, hats, and gloves began to flicker faster as they reacted to the tempo. Laser light descended o. The crowd and Cor snapped his head up reflexively. It was just part of the show he reassured himself.
Someone was pressed in front of him now. Moving lithely with the pulse of the room, each snare made her limbs pop from one position to another as she pressed her ass back against his crotch. Cor tried to slip away but she turned and draped an arm around his neck, pulling her closer to his face and biting her lip with a sultry smile.

She screamed, and Cor sunk right arm into her to his elbow. No one had heard the sound, the music was too loud, but they would find her. He pulled the blades back into his arm and extended his fingers again, cupping her heart in his hand. Bass, bump, bass, bump. Cor crushed her organ in this fist.
The two made their way across the floor, her arm draped over his shoulder as Cor laughed and swayed towards the smoking area. A bouncer stood watch over the balcony, not even turning an eye towards them as he walked his accident out. Under her jacket, Cor’s fingers extruded nanowires that ran up her spine to overwrite her nervous system and walk her with shaky grace. It wouldn’t last long, but it worked as long as you didn’t mind the puppet looking drunk.
Outside the music throbbed over the sounds of the city. Wind whipped past over the balcony’s solid light barriers and the transplast floor looked down into the descending foggy towers of Neo Socallos.
Cor dumped the dead weight on a bench and sat next her a while his his hand spooled the nano filament back through his fingertips.
“You got a light pal?” Someone asked. Cor extended his left arm and raised his middle finger.
“Christ pal, you don’t have to be a jackass about it.” The cap on Cor’s finger popped back and a butane torch sparked up from it. The stranger leaned in and lit his cigarette.
“I stand corrected. You’re not bad, man.” He motioned to the corpse. “She ok? Too much red wine?” His fingers gestures to the red stain on her stomach and thighs. “You’re awfully quiet pal.”
Cor flexed his right hand, loosening the retractable blades set into his forearm. Smoke blew out and he prattled on about shitty music and overpriced cocktails. With every comment came questions. Cor kept his face down and hat pulled low.
“Is she outside?” Someone said inside. Cor lifted his head and twitched his ears around, widening the aperture on his ear canal and directing the cartilage receivers towards the door. A quick scan of the music player filtered out the noise.
“I thought I saw her take someone out there. She is such a slut!” Laughter. Footsteps.

The people of the valley seemed to always hold the Highlands in a place of reverence and superstitious fear. When the gods were happy, rain would come down from the Highlands to water crops. When children were bad, bogey men crept down from the Highlands to snatch them away. Those touched with weirdness were said to have some blood of the Highlanders in them.

Travel to the Highlands was not forbidden, but few dared to make the venture. After all, who would wish to travel to a cursed land above the plains of their people?

Oliver found himself wishing that more stories of the Highlands were cautionary instead of vague. The stories he had heard of gnashing monsters and great beasts had been told to him by kids on the schoolyard, never backed up by the assurance of an adult. As he grew older, Oliver used the tales to frighten his younger sister but was always reprimanded by his mother, mostly for frightening his little sister but also for lying.

Somewhere in his mind, Oliver wished his mother could see this.

The creature hunched low, eyeing Oliver with those two thin slit pupils. Feathers ruffled along its back as the weight shifted from shoulder to should. He had seen his cat do the same thing before pouncing. Behind its raised backside Oliver could see a long tail whipping back and forth, a colorful tuft of larger feathers on the end.

He was sitting in a forest. Above, the trees had snapped and shattered as the two had plummeted down from the high bluff now to the beast’s back. Tentatively, Oliver tried his legs and found they were wobbly but working. The creatures head rose with him, watching his movements. Nostrils flared at the end of its snout and it’s lips split to reveal too many teeth, and a long forked tongue that it hung out as it panted and stared.

The ground rumbled with increasing intensity, and Oliver was beginning to find it harder to keep his footing. The particularly steep angle of his descent and loose quality of dirt was not helping either. It had been eager dry this year in the forest, so the hillside was dusty and loose. Oliver’s arms pinwheels on either side of as his feet sought widely spaced safe spot, propelling him downward to unknown territory.

Had Oliver been looking up at where he was going, rather than focusing solely on the ground only a few feet in front of him to maintain optimal escape velocity, he might have noticed the break in the ground before his foot plunged down and found no more earth to push off of.

He spun as he fell, the momentum behind his sprint twisting his body to look up at the clear blue sky and light cloud cover suddenly broken by the enormous shape of what Oliver assumed was this jungles apex predator.

Four strong legs. Three rows of the teeth - two for cutting and a back set for mashing. Large eyes set in the front of it pointed face, narrow slits honed in on poor Oliver. It blocked out the sun as it leapt, not mis stepped, over the edge of the high cliff and dove, not fell, after the boy dumb enough to travel to the highlands.

Oliver didn’t know a lot about physics, but he had seen the big rock and small rock demonstration at school. His class had taken bets on what would land first based on weights and such. As it turned out, all things pretty much fall at the same speed. This information seemed useless now as what appeared to be two tons of death began to accelerate towards him.

Suddenly, his view shifted to the ground below. Then the beast. Then the canopy top of forest again. He was spinning and unable to do anything, and there was now a dull ache in his right shoulder. The beast smashed through the intrepid cliff-growing plant life that tossed its prey and continued to descend at an alarming speed.

One large, clawed, hand reached out. Scaly flesh wrapped around Oliver and squeezed him in. Then there was a loud crunch and a series of snaps and cracks.

Oliver, however, remained unscathed.

He couldn’t see anything, but the grip around his body loosened and he felt the twigs and foliage of a forest floor beneath him. Feebly, he felt around and recoiled back when his hand brushed the cold scales of a beastly digit. What had happened? Why was he blind? Had the creature struck his head? Had he blacked out and been carried back to some lair to be fed to its young?

This was bad. And there was something tight and strange on his face. Groping blindly, Oliver realized his eyes were tightly shut. Taking a deep breath, he relaxed and attempted to open them.

There’s again ring that makes you invulnerable. You can’t be injured at all by any physical or energy based attacks, but the ring has a thresh hold it reaches before losing power for an amount of time. Taking the ring off resets it, but it needs to recharge based on how long it’s been off.

This ring is being brought to a pope-like religious figure. He wishes to keep it in a holy vault, it belonged to some long dead paladin initially.

The courier carrying this ring is attacked by pirates, who destroy the ship he is on and cast the man overboard, not knowing he possessed the most powerful magic ring of all time. The courier washes up ashore on an island, the ring on his finger.

He is discovered by two thugs, who rob him of his boots, his belt, his jewelry, and run away.

The island is rather large, not quite Great Britain but pretty big. It is known for its strong magical ties. The crime lord the thugs work for is a wizard cast out of the islands prolific Mage academy for stealing arcane artifacts and releasing them on the black market. The wizards stripped his magic when they ejected him.

This crime lord hired the pirates that attacked the courier, hoping to acquire the ring so that he could assault the Mage academy and force them to unblock his magic. They bring him the wrong rings though.

The thugs get into a bar brawl and one of them discovers he can’t be injured! This leads to a series of larger and more dangerous crimes until he is finally run through with a sword, the ring had finally lost power. The other thug takes the ring and runs.

Reports of these crimes reach the church, who send a paladin to find the criminals and retrieve the ring. The crime lord also hears these things and puts out a bounty on the two thugs.

The thug, not wanting to risk dying like his partner, decides to be rid of the ring and pawns it off. It ends up in the hands of a young boy, who spends his savings to buy the mysterious ring from the thug.