Out of Ashes

[grant]

The ship was on fire, burning fiercely as the row boat pulled away. The attackers ship slowly pulled around its floundering prey.

The rowers hear the sighting cry come from the enemy ship. Franticly they pull harder, as others struggle to raise the life boats small sail. When the ship closes a mix of plain and fire arrows hisses through the air, striking the water, the sail, the rowboat and all the crew. Four bodies fall into the water and the little boat starts to burn.

The next morning.

Rain shortly after the battle had put out the fires on the row boat. It drifted through the night, far from the scene of the battle it was washed ashore on the outskirts of the city of Yhaunn in Sembia. A monk from Moonshadow Hall found the boat, and its two infant passengers. A boy of dark hair and a girl of blonde of the same size and apparent age and a single basket containing their needs. It is not surprising that he thought them twins. He took them back to Moonshadow Hall and after a time it was apparent that no one was coming for them. Ash and Ashen Hull they were unfortunately named and welcomed into the Hall as children of Selune.

[grant]

- Some 18 years later a caravan travelling between Yhaunn and Waterdeep.

Ash lay awake on his bed roll, staring up at the moon and sighed deeply. He was still in turmoil, even now weeks later and hundreds of miles away. The joy he had felt for completing his trials and graduating to become a full member of Selune's Sun Soul order and earning the right to become an itinerant wanderer had faded immediately, over shadowed by shame. She had run up and embraced him, kissed his cheek in congratulations. It had stirred a realisation in him; a fire of passion that did not belong, was wrong, sick even. The one member of Moonshadow Hall who he should never have romantic feelings for was the woman he loved. The shame he felt for this love drove him from the Hall and on to this path. He had spoken to Selune's diviner hoping for a solution and was told he would find both resolution and purpose in a land in the North West. He had said his goodbye's to his masters, brothers and sisters in the order and to Ashen, his true sister. He told those curious enough to ask only that he felt he was about to fall into an unwise affair and that his travels should begin sooner rather than later.