Ancaith Riárdon

"Well, I'll tell you a bit of a story about myself. I used to be a sailor - see, halfling sailors aren't out of work often. All the advantage of a young kid, small size, nimble, but know how to follow orders like a good crew member, and not stupid about it. And with the legendary good luck and all, well, a captain knows an opportunity when he sees one.

"Luck won't do everything for you though, and being blessed by fate doesn't keep a man from harm. Our crew ran into a big storm, and I went overboard. I must have drifted a fair bit then, because I ended up on an island I don't remember seeing on any chart. When I came to my senses, I almost dropped dead then and there from fright - standing over me was a bronze dragon.

"I must have looked pretty pathetic. It's a surprise she didn't decide to make a meal of me - instead, she went and took me in as a guest.

"My ship didn't come back for me - I can't say I blame them. For all they knew, I'd been caught in Rán-yenat's nets and taken into the darks of the sea. The dragon - Khethryss, she was called - let me stay with her in the caves she'd dug out of the rock on the island. Seems there wasn't much for her to do, and my company kept her entertained. We got along fairly well - and a good thing too, because as far as I could tell, hardly any ships traveled that way, and there wasn't really any other way to leave the place. A couple of years passed, and Khethryss and I bonded quite a bit. We treated each other like siblings, and after a while, we ended up making a kind of friendship pact. Pretty soon after, I started getting some weird magic powers - I guess I should have expected something like that, making a bond with a dragon, but it still came as a little bit of a shock.

"I didn't get too much time to practice with them though, because a ship finally showed up close enough for me to signal to it. It was hard to leave Khethryss, but I knew I couldn't stay on the island forever, and she needed to find some adventures of her own. The ship was going to the north, all the way up to Astrata, and with my new abilities and my knowledge of how to make the best of a bad situation, I figured that sounded like a good place to go next."