Plot NotesNarivan was a traveler. Such a statement might be an oversimplification of the truth, but in its barest sense, it completely was in essence the core of who he was. Nari had wandered like the winds, sometimes letting his feet pick his pathway and sometimes just choosing a road because it hadn't had his shadow cast across it for a while. When he was younger, he often picked roads because his feet hadn't set foot on yet, which was always exciting for him. But, more and more these days he found that he'd been most places, seen most apparent things, and was now looking for something slightly different. His attitude might have been seen as fussy, but his eyes longed for new things and his mind craved stimulation that only someone addicted to the knowing the unknowable could want.
To think he was a ship rat was wholly inaccurate too. In fact, Narivan hated ships. He never sailed anywhere if he couldn't help it. Sure, he'd cross a plank to get to a remote Suvan Island with reported ruins, but unless the location was completely sealocked, he'd go any other way first. The dislike of sailing came from a very real experience off the shores of Cyphrus and Eyktol in a very real storm that had cost him the only love in his life. Rather than lost at sea, she'd become lost within her own mind off the shores of an island that Nari hated more than most. Curses Drrina was now settled comfortably in Syliras where the Widows watched after her needs supplied by a near endless flow from the stranger that could be no older than his mid thirties.
No, no ships for Narivan. He traveled instead by the gifts his two feet provided him with and the host of small donkeys that followed him like a pack of hunting hounds followed the kennel master out on a fox reconnaissance. There were eight of them, all named in order of acquisition and answering to their numbers quite nicely. They were, interestingly enough, all milling about behind his little booth in order One through Eight, munching on the hay he'd splurged to treat them with. They bore his books and inks and little portable table with nary a complaint because not unlike himself, they had been selected for their love of wandering. They came from breeders that were frustrated with their ability to slip gate locks and halters or wander into the breeders actual homes from the stableyards were they were reportedly securely restrained safely behind fences.
Nari had a soul filled with curiosity and vigor and his donkeys matched his enthusiasm - one and all.
And so it was that the blond man with the amber eyes watched Hadrian browse through his wares. He'd only stopped to sell of some of his work so he could send a new payment back to Syliras for Drrina's keep. The books and scrolls were simple things with plain covers and painstakingly neat handwriting. Some were titled on geography and some on more esoteric topics like physics and the nature of the natural world. All of them were off the beaten pathway in terms of fundamental. He had elaborate treatis' on named valleys that might only be well known because of a casual mention in a popular bardic recitation or song being currently circulated. In fact, Nari's stuff was so random it was almost impossible to believe the collection was all there together.
Leaning back in his portable folding chair, Nari raised an eyebrow and studied the animated stranger as he wandered through the bookseller's wares.
"They speak to you, don't they? And yet you don't have ear enough to listen to their siren song of history yet, do you lad?" The man said, his voice coming out a deep rich tenor that had overtones of bright curiosity in them.
Nari was rarely in a bad mood. And even rarer still was his inability to make casual conversation with complete strangers that turned deep fast and caused them to think in ways they might not have reasoned out on their own. True to form, he cast out his line like a fisherman eager to glimpse the jewels a pond held in secret, and finished his thought.
"People assume the greatest artifacts in the world were forged prior to the Valterrian out of mysterious magics and techniques long lost. But that would be plain ignorance talking. The mages of the times before the world held itself still and tight to its own breast were exceptional yes, but they did not live in extraordinary times. No.. the truth is the best most extraordinary things were forged when mankind and the others like us hid in the belly of the world - like children retreating back into their mother's wombs - when they had nothing else better to do because above them the world burned." He said with a half smile, then gestured to a green book that looked more like a journal than an actual text near Hadrian's elbow.
"Just think about it, lad. If you had fresh air, plenty to eat, and unlimited resources, you'd spend some time enjoying them. But if you have nothing else to loose and the likelihood of not living easily into the next day, your skill would grow exponentially, especially if you had a burning desire to live to see the sunrise again... and simple things the mages of old took for granted like wheat ripening in a field." He said, amused, as he gestured to the book titled 'Extrodinary Inventions of the Post Valterrian Underground."
