Vellis Vell, The Watcher

Adventure begins with tragedy. An invasion of giants, a flood, a plague, ad infinitum. This is the big picture, the grand scheme; the details, by and large, are irrelevancies. Minutiae that matter only to those who lived through it. And to me. Fate is a fickle thing, oft decried by the ignorant as a force responsible for their every misfortune. But it's more than that, and less; more than some malign cosmic force whose sole purpose is to be the scapegoat for the woes of the world. Fate, as it happens, doesn't care. About you, about me, about anyone. The threads of Fate, to use an exhausted metaphor, will weave as they will, uncaring and uninterested in the outcome. You are touched by Fate, from cradle to coffin. Fate IS the minutiae. That's where I come in. I was not a child of tragedy, of loss or grief. Such a history would be remarkable, and I am many things, but remarkable is not among them. Born the middle child of a middle child, I spent my youth watching. To be sure, I did more than watching, or perhaps I should say I did less. Naturally I would assist with chores, while I watched; I would care for my younger sister as needed, while I watched. It's not that these tasks bored me, nor even that I was absent-minded, for I am definitely not. It's simply that the details were always far more interesting to me. I was considered a passive child, and I was an oddity to be sure. Better by far to observe and let things fall as they may than to risk offending Fate. And so, I watch. I watch the comings and goings of a veritable army of woe-befallen adventurers. Their squabbles, and romances, their wars and betrayals. Their dogmatic differences that shake the world as surely as the sun rises. Through it all, I watch, ever alert for the threads of Fate that actually matter. For what will be, MUST be.