Patchy – as Lyssa knew him – had died while giving Lyssa a sign of where to go and this was due to two things my brother wished to accomplish. The first was to send Lyssa on her quest to meet our sibling, and get her back to a place where she could make changes, and the second was to die so he could be reborn.

Once reborn, my brother used his new life to groom a ruler. This ruler’s aspect was one of charismatically inclined. He could draw others to him, fascinate them, and use their own soul as his. This would allow him to draw more and more people to him, but as his only use of this increased power was to… increase his power even more – never actually make anything of it – he would have been a relatively benign demagogue. Should anyone with a more destructive aspect wish to, they could likely take him down without much issue.

But before this ruler realized his potential, my brother – his childhood friend – encouraged him to go on a journey through the islands with him. They stumbled upon the small island that was the birthplace of Sparrow. The island had decayed with the physical death of his mother and there should have been little of interest to any other than historians here. But my brother had left another piece of the Body hidden among the debris, and used the promise of treasure to bring the ruler to the untethered artifact.

While the artifact bound to the ruler, the ruler himself did not personally gain any differences – that would come in future generations. The dynasty my brother sought to birth likely secured, the two of them set sail to another island that would have another artifact. The ruler was not personally invested and, even though his trust in his friend was waning, he kept true for one last voyage.

They reached the island at the time Sparrow and Alys were learning of the past and were caught in the conflict between the Red-Bound and White-Bound. My brother sacrificed himself to the flames of one of the guards to the nobility, taking vengeance for the loss of the king’s son, attempting to save a White-Bound merchant and what appeared to be a Black-Bound child.

The ruler attempted to take on the Enforcers, but was easily defeated. He fled and found rumors of a mystical tree out in the wilderness, presumably in the center of the island. The merchant and mentioned something similar, and the center of the island was where my brother had told him the artifact was located. So, with three things pointing him in the same direction, and retribution on his mind, the ruler trekked inland.