UO:2014-10: Prophetic Manuscript: The Shepherd's Bane

Prophetic Manuscript:

Author: Owain the Blind

Published: October 2014

I should say that I have been exceptionally lucky in my life. By the time of the third visit from my Guide, I had wed and even had two children - a son and a daughter. The regret of never having been able to see their faces pales in comparison to the joy they have brought to me. It is to them I leave this final account, with instructions to hide it well.

On his third arrival, I spoke to my Guide for the first time - I asked his name. He responded only with cryptic remarks, saying he had and will be called many things. When I asked why he was helping me to see the things I had seen, he said that he is only concerned with keeping "order" and that one day my words would help him do so. It was then that he showed me something that which, hundreds of years from now, would surprise all who lived - the return of the Noble King.

Upon his return to the Kingdom he had created, the Noble King will be surprised to find the Healer, a dear friend but also an ideological rival, alive and on the throne. Seeing the people happy as citizens rather than subjects, and largely content with his old friend's rule, the King will lay to rest their old rivalry and resolve to stay for a short time before returning to the distant lands he had arrived from. It will not be long however, before the King's attention is drawn towards the Old Lands and those who elected to stay when he led the Great Exodus. In doing so, he will be sad, as he will see naught but turmoil as the forces of the Enchantress seem poised to overtake at last the stalwart Knight.

It is then that he will make a decision that will change the course of all lands - he will call for all those who followed him once before, to do so again. Charging them with the protection of the Old Lands, he will encourage them them to uphold the virtuous philosophy he had ruled and lived by. In response, the Enchantress will amass an army of wickedness the likes of which the world has never seen. Thus, a war of control will turn into a war of ideology.