<div class="floatleft">(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/ea/04/e8/ea04e8ddd6af3c8e3d007947f087752d.jpg)</div><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: impact;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;"><strong>Simon Merryweather</strong></span></span><br/><hr/>Half-Elven Bard<br/><div align="center">~ ~ ~</div>Once upon a time, there was a young man named Simon Merryweather.  He was a charming cad with a winning smile who knew how to strum an upbeat fugue upon his wooden lyre.  Much beloved and sometimes maligned, young Merryweather had earned a reputation as a lazy rapscallion and a wandering philanderer, but such ignominy heaped upon youth is unfair even if it's warranted.  But it is indeed true that young Merryweather was a lazy cheat who had misused the fair (and a few unfair) maidens of Mormouth, all in the pursuit of his artistic muse.<br/><br/>Now, the Merryweathers were homesteaders that raised livestock and broke horses for the plow.  Alvin Merryweather, of the Pitax Merryweathers, fathered Simon with an elven milk-maiden, who gave up the child as a foundling.  Alvin and his wife, Elena, raised the child alongside the other eight Merryweather children.  For all intents and purposes, Simon had a natural upbringing until he received a wooden lyre on his seventh name day.<br/><br/>Simon soon developed an unusual ability to play the lyre.  Knowledge of his skill with the stringed instrument spread far beyond the small hamlet.  The youth earned coin by playing at all the fairs, festivals, fetes, and funerals of Mormouth, but never traveled beyond its boundaries.  When he turned eighteen, young Merryweather had become a bit stir-crazy about living in Mormouth, and sought any excuse to leave.