A lot has happened since I left from home that day. I have gone from a life of crops and being under the boot of my lord to now being a mercenary archer with a title earned from the Rights of Spring and enough gold to get my family out of poverty. If I can ever get back to them that is.

Let's start at the beginning, if I can without going off track that is. My full name is Corin Evenwood. I was the only son of a family of five. My father was a hunter while my mother, two sisters and I would work our corn and wheat fields together. When I came of age I learned how to hunt using traps and my father's bow. The life was hard but a good one with love and family always at my side. Then, as it so happens, war came to out lands. Our lord Caylen at the time was wise and kindhearted. But he was not prepared to fight when the time came and thus our lands were seized by our enemy and our farm with it.

We struggled for two years under the boot of our new lord. During those years my father succumbed to the winter and I was left as the man of the house. I did what I could but I wasn't ready, I hunted as best I could but I wasn't ready, I tried to pay the new taxes but I wasn't ready, and when I fell through the portal to here while checking my hunting traps I wasn't ready.

When I arrived here I was scared and alone. I had landed in what I thought was a battlefield except there were no bodies. Just blood and weapons scattered around. I scavenged what I could in an effort to arm myself against whatever threats this world held. After a day or two of following the road I stumbled upon Mountain Run Winery run by the then Lord Foster. There I was taken in by The Black Sky Mercenary Guild. They taught me what this world was, how no one stays dead for long, the enemies and allies that had formed and how to best survive. They taught me to use a sword but my father taught me how to shoot and I never forgot what I had learned.

Those lessons have treated me well over the past year. From the small conflicts throughout the winter, to The Winter Council itself I watched and learned. It was there that I learned from a man named Grisson how to use the shadows as a place to both hide and attack, to spot a weakness in an enemy's armor from across the battlefield and to use poise and precision to sneak a coin or two when someone isn't looking. It was then I began to hope that maybe I could find a way to return home and provide a life for my family far away from tyranny. But then I saw, for the first time, The Corruption.

Several of the Black Sky members had told me stories of it as well as the conflict with the orcs but I had guessed they were played up to scare the new recruit at the time, me. They did not. Everything they said was true, the screaming, the rage and the fact that they could hide it until it was the perfect chance to strike. I could no longer consider only looking for a way back home now,

if that was to follow me through. It was that day that I realized what The Ever War truly was and why we needed to push back against the darkness.

I have now committed myself to fighting this war and doing what I can, because if this world falls then countless more will be in peril, including mine. So from the Siege of Cailenstadt to The Rights of Spring I have proven myself a capable warrior and continue to train and grow for the war that is to come. May the name Black Arrow strike fear into the hears of Orcs, The Corrupted and whosoever is on the other side of my bow.

P.S.

And may this journey lead me home again some day.