The Town of Forgivers

Celestaquee raised the first banner of Forgivers on a stretch of abandoned marsh, and every legend begins as a camp. The founding drew four souls, and before them Don Quackles was acclaimed to lead the guild to greater heights. Whether that acclamation was as wholehearted as the telling makes it, the record cannot say. Something unnamed kept him from easy rest in those early days, and that unease has no explanation set down anywhere.

The settlement climbed rank by rank from Outpost to Town, each step paid for in village trades, emerald pockets turned into books, books into diamonds, and fishing lines cast for hours while vassals complained of unpaid labor. Don Quackles noted he paid them with a roof. The vassals noted other things. Both accounts survive.

A formal shop opened, fitted with some working that made intruders levitate, a thing Don Quackles called witchcraft or a deity's favor and could not decide which. He has since become convinced the shopkeeper holds ties to some arcane power, pointing to unusual items, strange weather, odd trades, and one missing loaf of bread as evidence. The shopkeeper denied any connection and grew increasingly tired of the subject. Don eventually handed the shopkeeper his entire alchemy operation, then the responsibility for furnishing the settlement's interiors, having concluded that specialized skills were best left to the person who actually seemed interested in them. The shopkeeper, who had already furnished the Cathedral alone, accepted each new charge with the patience of someone who had stopped expecting to be asked. His allegiances remain unresolved.

Casper Exspiravit arrived as an unnatural figure who moved at the edge of crowds without being seen, and found in Forgivers the first welcome of his ghostly life. Archie Farwing the Wayfinder came after a life of solitary travel and proved his worth at the fishing lines. Forgivers became the first Land in the realm to reach one hundred Renowns, then two hundred, and later crossed one million in shared wealth.

Celestaquee was crowned ruler when the Hamlet was formally recognized. The relationship between her rule and Don Quackles' acclamation is not explained anywhere in the record.

Trade reached outward. A treaty was sealed with the Empire of NorthHelm after Don Quackles struck up a conversation with The Wither King largely on impulse. Non-aggression treaties went to Alstroemeria, Celestia, and Frostblade, and the Merchant Alliance was accepted. A visit to the Alliance's own fishing dock convinced Don and Archie that Forgivers needed one of their own. They extended a wooden platform out over the water, added posts around the edges and lanterns along the walkway, and built something that was not meant to be grand, only comfortable. Fishing had become one of the defining habits of the community, and the dock made it official.

Rumors of betrayal arose when Archie Farwing was seen leaving late at night. The truth was that someone had eaten Don Quackles' fish collection. The culprit was not found.

By the time expansion was discussed, shared wealth stood at roughly one and a half million. Forgivers set their sights on City status, requiring two million, with the cost of expanding their chunk limit still unknown. The three hundred Renown mark waited ahead.

For a time, Forgivers had been loud. Always someone building, trading, fishing, or dragging everyone else into a project that had sounded reasonable five minutes earlier. Out of that noise came a new ambition: a horse racing tournament, open to the realm, with a grand prize of one million coins and wagering permitted among spectators. Don Quackles chose the prize to suit the nation, a capitalistic land that had already turned fishing into industry and interior design into economic delegation. Whether the course was built, and who first crossed its finish line, the record has not yet closed.

A fishing expedition for a species mentioned in an old record, said to swim somewhere beyond the eastern waters, remains a thread the record notes and does not close. A wedding was spoken of once, to be held in the Cathedral. Who the second party was, the record does not say.