001: LEGENDARY

Feharan had always been ill-suited for life. His mother was a world-famous dancer, his father a not-very-well-known (and thus terrifyingly talented) assassin cross, and he was...a child that they tried not to think about too often, for fear of being overcome by the sudden need to jump off the nearest bridge in order to escape the shame of having born such a useless son.

Not that Feharan knew any of this, as he spent most of his time underground.

In a completely literal sense.

His one talent in life was an extraordinary skill at digging holes.

Still, he had been greeted with no small amount of surprise when he'd finally announced to his parents that he'd decided to become a thief. His parents were surprised that he'd ever manage to be anything aside from a sewer-rat, as that seemed to be his chief objective in life. It was far from an unpleasant surprise, though. There was always the chance, after all, that training would spark some manner of hidden brilliance in him and he would take after his father's genius after all.

They were sorely disappointed. Feharan was now thirty-six years old, and still a thief. He was too concerned with hole-digging to worry about promotion, or making a living, or any other inconsequential details of life.

There was, after all, quite a lot of dirt in the world, and quite a lot of holes that needed to be dug.

Meanwhile his parents entertained the notion of Feharan as a construction worker.

The job description did not appeal to him. Not enough hole-digging.

Or a garbage man, they suggested.

Even less hole-digging.

In desperation, they asked, or a gravedigger?

Tempting, but filling up the holes would be too much pain for him to bear.

His parents gave up and, after a long period of soul-searching, finally came to terms with the fact that the only future their son had was as an illustrious hobo-in-a-hole.

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Like his parents, Prontera also had to go through a long period of soul-searching, and like his parents, finally came to terms with the fact that they would have to put up with a six-foot man randomly popping up at people from directly under their feet.

The good people of Prontera could put up with thieves, robbers, and highwaymen. They understood the process of people exploding up from hidden holes in the ground, holding them at sword-point (or dagger-point, or, in the unfortunate case of several very senior members of the Thieves' Guild, needle-point) and demanding that their valuables and money be handed over. They understood how to deal with those people. You screamed for help, or you gave them what they wanted, or you bellowed some manner of warcry and ran a sword through their intestines.

But you could hardly justify stabbing a man through his gut when all he did after exploding up from the ground was apologize for getting dirt all over your nice dress.

And so the citizens of Prontera did what they always did with new and disturbing things like Feharan; they integrated him into the city, and soon they were explaining to their relatives from far away that oh, the strange brown-haired man who'd just climbed out of Main Street, don't mind him, he does that all the time.

It did not take long for Prontera to become used to him, and soon no one was surprised when they suddenly tripped and fell and sprained their ankle by stepping into the hole that Feharan had just vacated.

However, it still came as a bit of a surprise for some when one autumn day, after two weeks of submergence, a yawning Feharan climbed out of the fountain vacant-eyed, grey-skinned, and eaten away by decay, with his dismembered left arm slung over his right shoulder.

Others simply remarked that my, we now have our own walking maggot farm. Fancy that.