Those Who Change Fates – Adventurers in Eden

Often referred to as heroes, they are not, or at least not all of them are. An adventurer, at the most basic level, is just anyone brave and foolhardy enough to venture into places where they are unwelcome. You could even make the claim that the armies of the Republic of Andaliel or of Vedaria are the biggest corps of adventurers in the world. Where other mortals would be paralyzed or afraid, an adventurer presses on. He or she ignores the primeval fear that swells in the heart of anyone who knowingly faces destiny, and reaches toward eternity. Whether they do so for money, because they have nothing else, or because they want to make a positive difference in the world, depends on them.

Origins of Adventuring

As with everything in Eden, even this simple concept of the adventurer is made into a grand legend, but it has a more mundane origin. Throughout the tribal societies prior to the Aptoas Empire, the rite of passage for all able-bodied Iomadi was a week in the wilderness. They entered the primordial geography from which they believed they had first spawned, and they challenged it. It was not a matter of conquering it, but defying it by surviving where they should not have. The experience was life-changing to many, who sought to return to the wilderness again even after succeeding.

This began the culture of wandering which persisted during the Aptoas Empire and has risen again after the Intolerable War. Adel’s is a traveling culture, where even those who are settled will at least once in their lives try to see everything in their region. The more settled they are, the less they will travel, but they will travel, and they will see it as a journey. The most humble of rural villagers would still travel to neighboring villages or to grand nearby cities and towns, sometimes even as a faux rite of passage, something every kid must do. To them, the concept of something beyond their own is tantalizing.

Some strike out with the world in mind. Travel is a greatly romanticized notion, a religious notion. Everyone who can, will travel. Clergy are expected to visit religious sites in at least one other nation beyond their home, and anyone in a military position will see much of Adel throughout his or her life. This world was made to be seen, and everyone dreams of it.

What Sets One Apart

Many people travel and adventure in Eden, so what sets one apart as an adventurer? All adventurers begin as travelers, but the true adventurers are ones who conquer boundaries. When the pressure mounts, the adventurer will take the decision that is dangerous and makes people think he or she is crazy. Often the adventurer is as scared stiff of the legends and tragedies of a particular locale as the locals are, but they typically have no choice but to go into the Cursed Woods instead of around them. Breaking boundaries, plumbing the depths of places feared by others, all that adds to the strength of one’s name. All flesh is vulnerable, and all adventurers know fear and pain and weakness, but they live with it, they overcome it.

Adventurers who live long enough also tend to become relatively skilled at what they do. While a common villager can get very talented with a bow or blade, a legendary swordsman can cut through rock with a smallsword. The comparison of feats is a major part in differentiating and adventurer from any ordinary traveler. The gulf in skill that comes from being in danger and training constantly to survive cannot be overcome even by the most ardent practice in village life – though sometimes, as the great hero myths of Eden show, one can be born to a special destiny that leads one to great strength.

Finally, adventurers are highly motivated. A cowardly thief is no less an adventurer than the legendary swordsman if that cowardly thief has managed to make off with the jewels from the crown of an Agashura king. What matters is not a base characteristic of “heroism,” such as bravery or goodness. What matters is the grandness of your desire and the willpower with which you, despite whatever personal inhibitions you possess otherwise, accomplish what you set out to do. Most normal people, as they will tell you, would have given up a long time ago, when the odds first turned against them. You did not do so.

The Adventuring Culture

It is foolish to think that you are the only person on Adel who is powerful or “special” (a particularly meaningless term in Eden). There is an entire culture of people who are beyond the norm – delvers, thieves, soldiers, wizards, clergy, bards, assassins, spirits, merchants and nobles and more, all move in and out of the culture of adventuring that so tantalizes them. They have created their culture and made it their own, and made it the world’s culture in a sense.

The culture of the adventurer is highly mobile. Some members of the Clergy who have finished their studies travel across Adel spreading their faith and visiting holy sites; assassins chase the trail of death and greed that feeds them; soldiers move across nations at the behest of their home; merchants seek places to sell their wares at high prices, and purchase goods at low prices. So on it goes – the true adventurers are often wanderers, seeking after fortune with no clear path in sight.

As they travel, adventurers who are seasoned do well to watch out for signs of other adventurers. Adventurers have special symbols and sayings that they carve on trees or on rocks, paint on property (much to the owner’s chagrin), or that they display by erecting small monuments. Adventurers who know the script, for example, could tell that the scarecrow laid out in the middle of nowhere isn’t an error on the part of a nearby village, but rather a warning to other adventurers that there are belligerent flying spirits in this region and to be prepared to fend them off. The script is usually picked up by green adventurers if they ever partner up with more seasoned folks, or while talking in a tavern or some other social situation. Though it is also subject to much change, revision and creative interpretation, especially since many groups have their little trademarks.

Names and stories of different adventurers and their groups (if any) travel from place to place with them. They can be heard of in gambling dens, in small villages around the bonfires, in the inns and taverns, in theaters and in news pamphlets, from the lips of singers and off the tongues of jesters. The most important thing to an adventurer are rumors and stories. Every village, town and city has some, and though many are wrong, they’re the only thing a traveler with no prior knowledge has to go on. Stories about other characters and adventurers are usually the least important for adventurers – learning about the locations nearby is priority one – but they are also the most amusing and tend to have the most long-term value.

Rumors and stories tell the adventurer some very important details. The most important is that there might be something of value nearby, or an opportunity. If a village is suffering a drought, chances are there’s stories of what the cause might be, and investigating may prove profitable to adventurers. Even if all they get out of it is a meal – travelers with nothing to their names but camping equipment and weapons will appreciate any reward.

Most adventurers don’t “strike it rich.” The rich class in Eden got to be that way from inheritance, political shrewdness or charisma, serving someone who is rich, or because they make safe investments and legitimate businesses and have slowly built their way up. Most adventurers do none of these, or if they do, they quickly squander the money somehow, either in preparation for another journey, in paying for treatment for whatever grievous wounds they suffered this week, in charitable works, or usually, in random expendable entertainment like drink, parties and company combined with jewelry and cloth to convince everyone drinking, partying or sleeping with them that they are rich. Adventurers can, in small, calculated bursts, live like they’re rich, but unless they decide to settle down forever on the last score that they got, they can’t be rich for very long.

This is also assuming that the adventurer makes any money from what he or she does. The “wandering swordsman” archetype for example did not spring up because of poverty vows – most of them were really starving tramps with weapons and skills they couldn’t put to use any other way than helping villagers out and begging for reward in return. These tramps still exist to this day. In fact, the adventurers who defeated the Undefeated Swordsman of the North, Naren the Iomadi and his female consort Lai Sen, a Muikara swordswoman, are both known for selling whatever swords they’ve managed to hold on to fairly regularly, in exchange for food or enough money to skip town. So in a rather sorry show, they are rarely armed and often starving.

Heated rivalries rarely form between adventurers. Usually adventurers fall at cross-purposes rather than competing for the same purpose. When they do form, they are usually driven by either lust or money. Tales of romantic triangles ending in blood are more common in fiction than they are in reality, but not entirely uncommon either. Especially if every one of the parties involved in the triangle is an adventurer of roughly equal caliber – that can be disastrous.

Adventurers in Eden do not become national celebrities as known in modern times, unless they are ruthless criminals. They are not “rock stars” though many have an inflated sense of self-importance. However, they do become part of a multitude of songs and stories and an incredibly wide-reaching, shared culture that will surely immortalize some of what they did, even if they don’t always stand out among all the names. People recognize them for what they are at base – travelers, who hopefully bring at least money, if not prosperity, to the places they go to. So society, pragmatically, makes the most of travelers of all stripes.

Motives For Adventuring

Something drives people to seek the many paths connecting to their homes and to follow them away from familiar places. There are always motives behind all travel, and travel almost undoubtedly will lead to some adventure, however minor.

Money: Adventurers make most of their money from finding rare or valuable things and hanging on to them for as long as possible until they can off-load them somewhere where they’ll be more valuable. This does not just apply to gold or jewels or weapons – which are things rarely found in the wilderness anyway. While the purple and red flowers may be useless to the natives, they might be the base of a deadly poison that can be sold the next town over. The books found in the ancient ruins or in the lair of a mad wizard might be unreadable to the adventurers, but a wizard the next city over will pay premium for them. Jewels may be rare, but rocks are everywhere, and sometimes, rocks are valuable to the right eyes.

Simply put, adventurers don’t usually find caches of gold, weapons and diamonds very often. When they do, they’ve hit pay-day for a long time to come and consider themselves extremely lucky. More often, adventurers are practically broke, sometimes starving, until they walk into a place where their baggage is actually worth coin. Then they’ve hit pay-day and consider themselves extremely lucky. This baggage is composed of any rare goods they’ve managed to hoard.

Virtue: Many adventurers do so in order to right wrongs. They lend a hand wherever they go, expecting little if any reward but the thanks of the people that they help. Members of the clergy, depending on religion, are often this way. The tradition began with the Canon of Arcline, the story of the goddess’ travels as a mortal woman, which inspired many of the cloth to travel to “holy sites” – places designated in the book as such – and spread their message along the way. Another kind of virtuous adventurer is the one adventuring to save someone or something precious to him or her. The classic village hero who goes after an evil creature in the vicinity of his or her home, to save his or her spouse or fiancee or lover, for example.

Obligation: Some people have a duty to uphold, as soldiers or members of other organizations, that lead them to heed the call of adventure. It may be family honor, or atonement for a sin, or something as simple as having a job to do for the month’s wages, but the choice to adventure didn’t lie entirely with the person, it was something they had to do, something pushed on them either by the consequences of their own actions, or by an external force.

Curiosity: The multitude of rumors and stories in Adel don’t just catch the ears of current adventurers – they create new ones. People may follow the paths of legendary heroes before them out of curiosity and a desire to partake in something greater than themselves. The curiosity about what is out there drives one to carve out a place in that vast, open world.

Glory: Sometimes an adventurer just wants to impress. They want their name to travel the world, stories of themselves to be heard far and wide. They want the names they give to their children to matter, or to make their own name stand above those of the ones that came before them.

Resignation: Some people have no choice but to adventure, because they have nothing in life anymore. Their ties to the world they knew have been severed, either by themselves or by something else. The lone survivor of an isolated village; the expatriate accused of treason; the archeologist who discovered the truth of the world in an aberrant ruin and became half-unhinged; whatever the reason, there is no going back to your old life. You can only keep moving forward, elsewhere, anywhere.

Restlessness: Some people just cannot stay put. They long for anything other than an anchored life.

The End of the Road?

Most adventurers don’t quit because they want to. They might have received a wound or disease that finally forces them to stop, or they might find a companion that wants to settle down, or they may become responsible for so much that they stop being able to move (such as becoming political figures). The road always ends, but adventurers don’t like to think about it that way. They live adventure by adventure, acknowledging not their mortality nor the limited youth and strength they possess.