Chapter One: In the beginning there was…

Herand had long been a loyal servant to Valua. To the country, and not to the leaders, per se. He knew which ones had brought the people happiness, and which ones had brought them despair, hopelessness. He had come from the under works, working hard to rid himself of the godforsaken sewers and those damned hounds.

He had slowly risen to power, training himself with the weapons of skeletons, wearing armor he had cobbled together from dead bodies after he washed it.

His only goal in life had been to get free of the under works at the time. Possibly to serve the leader at the time, King Hazzen, or perhaps the now-rapidly-rising-in-power Queen Teodora.

His first step in getting out of the sewers would be to get away from them physically and mentally. It wouldn't do for a Valuan soldier to go about smelling like hound sweat and rubbish. It also wouldn't do for him to employ the unorthodox fighting he had long used, nor would it do for him not to have a good, complete set of armor, regardless of whether or not he could fight better in his other set.

He had gone out into the rich district, working hard to keep the disgust from his face, and posed as a loyal Valuan officer, giving crisp salutes any time an officer of any rank came by. He was training himself, working hard to achieve his dream of leaving this rock. He failed several times, and had been fined hundreds of pieces of gold for impersonating an officer. Eventually, though, he had finally approached the academy. The place where legends were born.

Under Hazzen's rule, it wasn't as it was in Teodora's, or Galcien's, nor as it was in Vyse's. There were hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers there at the time, and they were treated as people. They trained with weapons that were battered, beaten, and in some cases slightly painful to the wielder, but they were kept in good repair, and in good effectiveness.

Herand remembered his instructor's first words to him when he had gone up in combat against another student. "Damn, son, don't kill him!"

It had been meant in a sense to calm him, to keep him from beating the younger new recruit to a pulp, and it had worked. He took it as a compliment and stopped at once, pride swelling in him. That had been the first of many compliments, both meant and misinterpreted.

Herand had shown skill and talent, but not enough field time for some. He seemed to portray the wrong image for others. Especially the one time admiral Alfanso, though he had been but a captain at the time. A captain with a big mouth and enough favors to call in to give him the rank.

"We can not have our military represented by cut-throat ruffians! Why, look at him! He might as well be a pirate for all the scars he bears, as well as his rags." the captain's face flashed before Herand's eyes, shaking it's head. "No, we have plenty of officers. Send him off to find some nice sludge pool to play in."

Herand had fought hard against that image, and with Alfanso being as hated as he was, his opinion was counted in such a way that it actually helped him. Herand managed to complete his basic training, but wasn't aloud, to his dismay, on a ship. Alfanso's opinion, though not weighing much, had weighed just enough to keep him from getting away from Valua, where he wouldn't be under a scrutinizing eye.

He was assigned to the recruitment area, helping to bring in new people from all over Valua, particularly the rich section and upper-class citizens. He did fairly well at the job, in the sense that he brought in good fighters from the under levels and waist works, those who hadn't grown up attending the theater and talking with good company over a banquet, but those who had grown up fighting anything that came at them with any weapon they could get, whether it be hand, or blade, whether they wore armor or skin.

They were true fighters and served well. But as all things were in the organization, when people noticed you were doing well in your assigned task, they promoted you. That is to say, they gave a little piece of metal to pin on your shirt and sent you off to a completely unrelated task. In this case, Herand became an instructor, at the exact same day as when Teodora took power over Valua, implementing immediate changed everywhere.

The first thing she changed was the training area. Before, weapons experts shot off sensor packages, which didn't break very often, but cost a good deal of money to make and repair. She realized that if her officers simply used regular ammunition and rounds, in a year they would have saved all of one hundred pieces of gold. Ironically enough, because of the new change, twenty people died, while another thirty received serious injuries to the point where they could never be soldiers. It became widely muttered in the ranks that a life was worth but two pieces of gold to the empress.

Eventually Herand was recognized again, Alfanso now far off, searching for someone being whispered as the white lady, said to be of the silver moon. He was given his wish, and finally taken off of Valua as a soldier on one of the thousands of magic ships that sailed the skies of Arcadia.

Herand was fortunate, having been among the many who invaded Yafutoma, he and the Errant Flame as the magic ship was called had been shot down. Plummeting toward deep sky with malfunctioning or dead engines, he had managed to hotwire the engines to crash land them onto a floating rock after the bridge took a missile directly through the glass, killing the captain.

Herand, several engineers, and a single troop of soldiers were the only survives out of a crew of thirty-six. The crew barely managed to hobble the ship onto the mainland of Yafutoma before it came apart, never to fly again. Herand and his crew were forced to deal with a ship full of Blue Rogues to make it back to Valua, prepared to face shame for defeat and loss of life, but were surprised to see that Valua no longer stood proud and confident- rather it was now a smoking, bleeding piece of hell.

Standing amidst the wreckage was Galcien, preaching of the wrongs done by Teodora, perished, to remembered, and to be scorned, issuing promise after promise of greatness for them all. Thus began the Galcien era.

Still walking, Herand was jolted into shock reality as a wall came to meet him, his eyes glazed over in memories. Feeling foolish, he straightened his posture, looked around, was relieved to see no one around, and headed out towards the communications area again.

"Tell Admiral Red-Head to let them through," he said to the comm. Officer, using the widely used nickname for the Admiral. "Only one ship, though. To put it as he did, no secondary mess-ups".

The officer nodded. No mess-ups. But now mess-ups were affordable. They weren't at war, and their leader understood if there was a mistake. There was peace, for however brief a time.