HISTORY OF THE FATEFUL COIN

   I N T R O D U C T I O N   

Nestled atop the cliffs that rise from the Sword Coast, the citadel of Candlekeep houses the finest and most comprehensive collection of writings on the face of Faerun. It is an imposing fortress, kept in strict isolation from the intrigues that occasionally plague the rest of the Forgotten Realms. It is secluded, highly regimented, and it is home to a young man named Jaycen. Within these hallowed halls of knowledge, his story began.

Jaycen had spent most of his first twenty years of life within Candlekeep’s austere walls, under the tutelage of the sage Gorion. Acting as his father, Gorion raised him on a thousand tales of heroes and monsters, lovers and infidels, battles and tragedies. However, one story was always left untold--that of Jaycen’s true heritage. He had been told that he was an orphan, but the rest of his past was largely unknown.

Jaycen knew little of how he came to be a ward of Gorion’s, but over the years he gleaned something of his mother’s tale from his foster father’s vague allusions and from the words he sometimes uttered in tear-filled sleep. He knew that his mother hailed from a town called Silverymoon, and that she had been a friend of Gorion’s for many seasons. As he had no memory of her, nor any keepsakes to remind him of her existence, he came to believe that she died while giving birth to him. Perhaps it was the pain of such a parting that lead Gorion to cloister himself in the narrow halls of Candlekeep and raise him as his own. Of his true father, he had learned nothing.

Inspired by his foster father’s tales of chivalry and honor, from a young age Jaycen committed himself to the pursuit of good and the punishment of evil. Candlekeep was a world of many sacred and unspoken laws, and he learned to uphold them all unquestionably. His honesty and integrity brought him to the attention of some of the keep’s elders, but none of them ever seemed to have cause to call upon his services. While the citadel saw the passage of the occasional ne’er-do-well, it rarely needed to be purged of evil.

The peace of Candlekeep’s surroundings were comforting to some, but Jaycen found them stifling. He knew his true place was traveling the realms, fighting evil wherever the need arose. But Gorion would hear nothing of it. He insisted that Jaycen commit himself to the life of a scholar and a scribe and strongly pushed him toward joining the clergy. Gorion’s close-minded adamancy frustrated Jaycen to no end, and over the years it slowly created a rift between them. Gorion nearly flew into a rage when Jaycen enlisted in the keep’s militia on his eighteenth birthday, but the old sage soon came to the realization that there was nothing he could do. The boy would have to choose his own path sooner or later. He had done his best to point him in the right direction; now it was time to step back and let him choose his own fate. While Gorion frowned upon Jaycen’s pursuit of martial training, he at least took some small comfort in his decision to begin training to become a paladin.

Paladins are an order of holy knights that are bold and pure, the exemplars of everything good and true. Jaycen’s skill with his sword was quite impressive, and the strength of his morals and ethics was beyond reproach. Yet, try as he might, Jaycen could never seem to convince the clergy leaders of Candlekeep to ordain him as a paladin. They seemed to be impressed by his combat prowess, and they trusted his code of ethics implicitly, yet there seemed to be something, something that they would not speak to him about, something they almost seemed to fear about him, that made them reluctant to bestow the honor of paladinhood upon him. Jaycen tried to speak to Gorion about this, but the old sage would never give him a straight answer and would quickly change the subject, as if he found the matter difficult, almost painful, to talk about.

Over the next few years, Jaycen noticed that Gorion seemed to be growing more and more distant from him, as if some grave matter weighed heavily on his heart. He asked about Gorion’s concerns as gently as possible, but his queries were in vain. His sole comfort was the knowledge that his foster father was a wise man, and he knew he would tell him when the time was right. Nonetheless, Gorion’s silence was troubling, and he could not help but feel that something was terribly wrong...

Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by Ryan Brady.