Meant to post this here:<br/><br/><div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/6/64/Sample_d70a7cad992d0c81859db4dbfb32f249.jpg)</div><br/>Some miles south of Free Port along the coast is a smaller city—Verona—which is ruled by seven merchant princes.  Prince Shadavere has a reputation for acquiring beautiful wives and concubines and hiding away his even more beautiful daughters in a secret seraglio.<br/><br/>While the rumors make the situation far more sinister than it actually is, Diona—Prince Shadavere's 17th daughter—nonetheless grew up secure and sheltered in her father's estates.  At first she was happy, with many chances to romp around the estate with her sisters, instruction in dancing, comportment, religion, and the martial arts.  A voracious reader, Diona spent many hours devouring books about distant lands and far away places.  She sang to the goddess Desna in the night.  She danced in the starlight.  She delicately gathered swallow tailed butterflies and released them in the moonlight.<br/><br/>When Desna began to answer her prayers with blessings of mobility and miracles of healing, Diona decided it was time she was free of her fathers walls to do what pleased her goddess most—traveling the world on the whim of the wind.<br/><br/>After a long conversation, her father agreed.  He gave her several gifts, then a letter of introduction to the Adventurer's Guild of Skyspear.