Once every six months, an older man visited a local village to trade for goods and medicine not produced in the hamlet in which he lived. It was expensive, but it saved lives and excited the kids, so it is worth it in his eyes. On one of these trips, returning to his home, he found a child collapsed on the ground. The child had been starved and abused. The child’s long and tangled hair had been roughly chopped in places. Oddly, the child’s clothes appeared to be of noble design, but were tattered and torn beyond recognition.
The old man looked upon the body with sadness and disappointment toward the world. "Who could do such a thing to a child?" he thought. He sat his things down and began digging a shallow grave for the child, intending to return later with his neighbors to give a proper funeral. Though, when moving the child to the grave, he noticed breathing--the child was still alive! He rushed back to his home, leaving his belongings behind.
The old man took the child to the hamlet’s only priest, an elf who took a liking to the people of this nameless hamlet and wished to spread the goodwill of his god to them. Using holy magic and elvish medicine, the elvish priest cleaned the child and treated their wounds. After twelve long hours of work, the child finally woke up, their face filling with fear upon seeing the elf. The child tried to leave, but the pain was too great. And so the child cried and begged for life.
The child did return to health, being cared for by the old man. The child was indeed an odd one, speaking and acting like a noble. But, when probed, the child would not even give their name, and rejected any name their neighbors gave. Despite these quirks, the child was loved by everyone in the hamlet, always willing to help with anything asked. No more than eighty people lived in this nameless hamlet, mostly humans with a few halfling families, even some ambians that wandered in from nearby woods. However, the child avoided the lone elvish priest, and shed no tears when he eventually passed away.
As the child grew up, they began exploring the lands surrounding the hamlet. They would leave for days at a time, returning with treasure and newfound skills. In one of these expeditions, the child brought home a winged friend, a speawren. The two became inseparable. The people of the hamlet were skeptical of the speawren; songs were still being sung about the rise of humans against the avians. But the speawren had proven to be just as caring and skillful as the child they had rescued less than a decade before.
As time went on, the two would leave their hamlet for longer periods of time, returning with more people and treasure, and would even ally themselves with one of the Dzroutk. Before long, this lone nameless hamlet would grow to be one of the biggest cities in Aurlia.
Long ago, a single man rescued a dying child out of the goodness of his heart. And in return, the child would bring wealth to his home, and would become the First Queen of the Callinian Empire.
