Words on the Wind

Wegnard dreamt of the clouds. He dreamt of a life of adventure, beyond the little farm he grew up on. He knew of the importance of his family's work, the gratitude on the face of those to whom they sold and bartered their crops, but whenever he sat back upon the boulders marking the boundaries of their fields, looking up, he saw the small and distant shapes that passed by in the sky, shadows darting in and out of cover as the mists rolled. He wondered where each of those little toy vessels might be going, and he wondered what it might be like, to be up there too.

For any youth, chasing such a dream, the Queen's navy can be an enticing recruiter. Wegnard enlisted the first moment that he could, on the morning of his fifteenth birthday. Bright-eyed and hopeful, the learning was hard, but being a member of Her Majesty's forces was everything that he had ever hoped for... for at least a while.

For that while, Wegnard thought that he had found his place, but for all his fervent duty, he was slow to rise in the ranks. Not finding the immediate prestige that those from wealthy lines claimed, he was confident that his skill would shine through his toiling, but for this reason and that, he was overlooked for promotion again and again. He did his best to remain optimistic, but such rejection wears heavy on even the brightest of souls, and it was the midst of his eighth year of unrewarded service that saw him stealing away into the alleys one night on a resupply stop in a small port, never to be seen again when the ship drew up anchor in the morning.

Now officially a deserter, and knowing there was no way he could return from this ploy, though his regret had been nigh instant, Wegnard made plan to fake his own death, to send some signal back to his former crew that something had become of him during that fateful visit, that it had not been his choice to leave. He never did find out whether the bloodied shreds of a uniform he had paid a young woman to return to the next officer that visited port had convinced them, and yet still he had to hope. Regardless, he needed to disappear.

Taking up a new look and a pseudonym or two, the last of his savings earned him passage on a vessel to the opposite edge of the Caldera, on the island of Zambu, from where he quickly set to exploring the viability of a new life. Confident that he was free enough from suspicion (after a year of lying low, he happened to cross the path of a uniformed officer one afternoon, who gave him not a second look) he began to seek positions that would put use to his hard-earned talents. He took on work with whatever crew would hire them, by his own preference falling in with those who less closely followed the law more often than not. Soon, he began to build a bit of a reputation for himself, something which swiftly required shedding his birth surname for another, lest his former employers catch wind.

It wasn't long before Wegnard began to fancy himself a mercenary, a prized resource for all who could pay him. A thrill for adventure turned to ambition, and ambition began to turn to greed, and soon enough it was the life of a profiteer he fancied. But these new dreams opened him up to a new world, one with a far darker sky...