That’s awesome. You’ve got to love tradition and a bit of fairytale logic.
Some alternative options, because the possibilities are endless:
Your family’s bloodline is impeccable. Their coffers … aren’t. And dungeons have treasure. A quick influx of cash with the right name behind it will do wonders.
You’re the spare heir with nothing to do and you’re bored. A little recreational adventuring never killed anyone, right?
My good man, the gentleman adventurer is a tried and true institution! How else do you think the great discoveries of our nation were uncovered!
Your once-proud family’s fortunes have waned, and your grandfather is convinced that the loss of a family artefact is to blame. It’s up to you to retrieve that artefact and break the curse before there’s nothing left.
Your once-proud family has been the victim of a coup. As the survivor, you’re determined to avenge them and regain the family seat, but that will require armed forces, and mercenaries require cash. Hence the need for a bit of dungeon delving to pay your way.
Your once-proud family has made a grave political error and their good name hangs in the balance. Your political opponent has offered a (likely fatal) act of penance to make up for the misstep. You know you’re not meant to survive, but what else can you do?
Your once-proud family is a nest of infighting, horror, and fatal ladder climbing, and honestly you think you’re safer in some dungeon in the arse-crack of nowhere. It at least makes it slightly more difficult for your cousin’s assassins to catch up to you.
You’ve made the grave error of falling in love with a royal heir, and their royal parent, disapproving but needing to appear fair, has set a series of impossible challenges before you to win their hand.
You wanted more than a life constrained by politics, reputations and marriages, and so you ran away to become an adventurer.
There is a darkness on the horizon, and you feel a deep and genuine need to combat it, but your family is positioned precariously, so your activities must not be linked back to them. Thus, you’ve disguised yourself to go out and get things done.
Inheritance in your family doesn’t simply pass to the eldest child. Instead, you must earn it by some deed that will put your family’s name emphatically back on the map.
Your family has a long and honourable tradition of fighting evil, and while they do their best to keep one child back to actually carry on the line, the rest are expected to go out and do good for the world.
Your family has a long and dishonourable tradition of tomb-robbing, ‘archaeology’, and other assorted shady dealings, and you’re quite happy to carry on said tradition.
You are a knight of the crown, and you are on a quest.
Honestly, there are any number of reasons for a noble, disinherited or otherwise, to be out and about, from basic boredom to any number of other causes. They’ve got the resources to indulge, and the reputation to defend, and any number of long and storied histories that can come attached to their name and bloodline.
gummygunk
izzy806
dededos
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
snowghoul
