[img]http://baku-panda.org/images/esiri_header.png[/img]
[sub]Theme: [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG-BIMPtC9k][i]Sultana Dreaming[/i][/url][/sub]
[color=silver]
[hider=Prologue]The city-state of Ul’dah had a reputation that far preceded it.

How many times had he heard stories of Ul’dah?  How many more had he read of Ul’dah?  From within the cloistered walls of Stillglade Fane, the young Padjal had often tried to imagine what this gleaming jewel of Thanalan -- this city of the Lalafell -- must be like.  Adventurers would fill the Carline Canopy and tell stories of it.  When they did, they used words such as affluence, wealth, and prestige.

The sun sparkled overhead.  It’s light blinding as it radiated across a cloudless sky.  Being accustomed to the forest canopy overhead, the boy was certain that this was more sky than he had seen in his whole life.  Aboard the airship, he had risen above the trees, riding among the clouds as the airship traveled from out of Gridania and across Thanalan.

There were no trees below them now.

Barren rock painted the land in varying hues of brown, gold, and red.  The painted desert reflected the sunlight, creating a stifling environment quite unlike the humid forests of the Twelveswood.  The air here was dry.  The heat pervasive and oppressive, as the sun beat down without so much as a cloud for shelter, and the barren rock reflected it upward as well.

He saw the great city.  And, as soon as he did, he knew that was the jewel of Thanalan of which so many adventurers had spoken. 

He saw the walls.  More than that, he saw what was outside the walls.  Ghettos.  Ad hoc encampments of tents, clustered together for shelter in the shadow of a sanctuary denied them.

Where legend spoke of wealth, the young Padjal saw desolation.  Where soldiers of fortune spoke of prestige, he saw poverty.  Where others had boasted of prestige, the boy saw the disenfranchised.

It gave him pause.  As the airship passed over the walls of the city, the dark-haired boy peered from over the side of the railing, looked down at the inconvenient truths that were laid bare upon the earth, and he found that Ul’dah was not the same as the city that had so often been described to him by those who claimed to know it well.

Great pillars of white marble framed the grand archway through which the airship turned, it’s descend at last brought to a shuttering halt that caused the boy to hold fast to the railing until they had, at long last, come to a complete stop.

Through one small step for Padjal, he had done was no other had since the time of A-Towa-Cant.  He had left the Twelveswood on a quest to understand the larger world.  Now, departing the airship, the boy took his first steps apart from Gridania or the Twelveswood.  A shaft of unfinished wood tapped against the cobblestone, as the child walked with a cane in hand.  

The cane was formed at the end into a hook.  Or, rather, a crook -- the familiar implement of the shepherd.  The staff itself was just slightly taller than the boy, himself.  A simple tunic dressed his frame, a pair of short pants jutting out from underneath the hem.  His knees and shins were exposed, his feet tucked into a pair of soft leather boots.  He seemed as casual as any Midlander child, save for one rather unusual feature about him.

He saw the heads turn as he passed from out of the airship landing.  It was something that he’d expected.  As usual as the Lalafell seemed to him, no doubt a Padjal was more so to those who may never have visited Gridania.  And, even then, may still not have encountered one of the heralds of the forests.

The trip from the airship landing to the Adventurer’s Guild was short, but the experience matched what he had seen from above.  Men and women displaying their material wealth for others to admire, while nearby a girl danced for whatever coin that one might spare, and an old man begged for scraps that he might have a meal to eat that day.

Surely, the gleaming jewel of Thanalan was pyrite in its purest form.[/hider]

The specialty of the house was something known as a crumpet.

As Mother Mionne had warned him, it seemed that mun-tuy brew was not something that the people of Thanalan either knew of nor regarded well.  As such, the boy decided that he would simply have to adapt to what the people of Ul’dah considered as cuisine.

The tea was bitter.  It’s acrid bite a sharp contrast to the crumpet -- leavened bread that had been saturated in honey before being doused in butter.  It was as excessive as it was overstated.  The perfect foodstuff for Ul’dah.

As he sipped at his tea and nibbled at his bread, the child listened while Lyveva detailed the current state of the free company.  

That there might not be fame or fortune to be had was hardly a problem for the boy.  Neither were objects of his desire, nor the motivation for his excursion from Gridania.  Still, it was not what he had expected.  Rather than the boastful hubris of adventurer’s bold, instead a recruitment pitch hers was a call for aid.

One which seemed to resonate with some in attendance.  The first was a Miqo’te, though rather different it seemed from the Keepers of the Moon who prowled the shadows of the Twelveswood.  The second was a Lalafell.  In both cases, the colorful language that they used brought to mind stories that he’d been told of Limsan taverns.

[color=snow]“It is difficult to render aid when one cannot appreciate the task,”[/color] the boy noted, speaking up after a brief pause. [color=snow]“You spoke of reclaiming something that was lost.  Pray, what would you ask of us?”[/color][/color]