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Hello everyone, Once again I am starting a new project. To not disturb the continuation of the story, I put the remarks and so on into spoiler boxes. Thanks to @malefactusand @Silvervanefor supporting my idea and providing first feedback, Thanks to @Glitterwolfand @Cyradisfor further support And to @OneBoot, @buglips*the*goblin and @Chaoswolf for listening to my first attempt. Without further ado – let’s go! Chapter I The story of a village begins A girl heads out for adventure Once upon a time there was a village named Silvervane, founded on the edge of a rich silver deposit. Everyone thought that this small and obscure town would soon rise to glory and greatness. A place where to all of the Earth’s kindred would pilgrim. A center of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans and creatures from all over the world. It was not long after this promising beginning, that the Imperial Academy of Land Surveillance measured the true size of the deposit and issued a report to the Imperial Throne, stating that the natural resource was of no significance for the great needs of the country. This country, as we will soon learn, was called Cyradis and its ruler, the Crimson Empress, decided the fate of Silvervane. The anticipated Great Silver Rush never happened and therefore Silvervane fell into the dark, bitter maw of oblivion. Soon, the village was of no importance anymore and its residents – all the people who didn’t want to leave or couldn’t go – had to adapt with their new situation. Being isolated by great forests to the west and the south, a deep and stormy sea to the east and high mountains to the north, they were trapped, an enclave of human life in the middle of nowhere. It was no easy existence for those left behind. Land had to be taken from the Malefactus, the Evil Forest that bore all kinds of creepy creatures; weird trees and plants, armies of strangely talking mushrooms and other unspeakably fantastic and eerie beings. To counter the dreads of nature, the villagers hired warriors. Fine and athletic men and women with adventurer bodies, not those puppets or models one would expect in such a situation. No bodybuilders or mannequins. They were real and they were spectacular. Some of them were dressed in weird clothes though. Chainmail bikinis for example. But that is a fact we can ignore here as the really important values of a human being are the inner ones. One of those fighters was Sana, a young barbarian woman from the high north, who was very fond of her inner values. She had a great heart, and as great hearts need a lot of space, her chest was quite ample, too. On top of that, her liver … well … let’s forget about her liver. Originally Sana was supposed to be the main character of this record but due to her constant drunkenness, unbelievably violent and rude behavior and the fact that all sorts of people complained about her rather simple clothing, the Imperial Academy of Written Tradition and Oral Lore had to reassess the situation. Therefore she will not be participating other than as a secondary character. But: Sana had a daughter. Only the great gods know how that happened, but it did – around twelve years before the beginning of this piece of history. From her early ages on, Barbaria seemed to be a very energetic child. There and back again, she roamed the lands, wandering through the forests and the grasslands, exploring mountains and battling aggressive waves at the sandy beaches of the Sea of Lethe. Yes. Barbaria was always on the road. Standing still and waiting was not her thing. She couldn’t just sit in the tavern and drink until she fell asleep roaring like a copulating dragon – something her mother had mastered long ago. And so the girl once again headed out, taking one of the axes of Al, the old woodcutter (a really big tool of destruction measuring almost her own height and weighting approximately seven pounds) and leaving Silvervane for the sake of catching a Glitterwolf. No one had ever seen such a creature or even heard of it, but Barbaria was certain: the white cat behind the workshop of Sáthach, the weapons manufacturer, had told her the truth when she described the wonderful and shimmering fur of this specific animal. Al asked her to stop. “She is an untrustworthy missy”, he warned the girl. But Barbaria felt she was on the right track. So she encouraged the faith of the old man: “I’ll get him”, and left with the big shiny axe on her shoulder. Her long, blond hair, the last of her to be seen before she disappeared into the woods. And what happened there will be told in the next chapter. ***