The following excerpt (I have edited it from its original form – you’ll thank me later) is from a rather long chapter I wrote for Kingdom Rules when it was in its infancy. It didn’t add anything to the story—it was a stand alone chapter if you could call it that. Later, I thought it would make for a great short story and well, later is upon us. I will be releasing parts of it until it’s been completed. At some point I will offer it as a completed work on the website.
Without further adieus, I present the start of Isgaut Monster.
Isgaut “Isi” Skard was a lady’s man for most of his turbulent life. He was handsome, smart, well-spoken, and witty when need be, and all this despite his ugly and dreadful upbringing. But time was unkind to Isi Skard, as it is to all men of his ilk, and rightly so. His thick hair thinned, and gray sprouted over the black, just as weeds invade a garden. The face turned leathery from exposure to bitter icy winds and severe summer heat. Too much ale, wine and other, stronger concoctions dulled his once sharp mind. The life of Isi the conman was not one worth having; making enemies at every turn, forced to move from town to town, never having a home or knowing where the next meal was coming from.
Isi, when he was not using an alias, was born of a whore and a drunkard, best as anybody could tell. He grew up in an orphanage in the slums of Taazrand, a port city in northern Acaria on the south side of the Pusag Sea. At thirteen, he got expelled from the orphanage for bedding a seventeen-year-old nun, but not before he stole the coinage intended as a donation and ran away with the liberated vestal. He hated the nuns who beat him consistently, so he figured they were square given the number of lashings he absorbed while there.
Isi soon left his gravid, former canoness and boarded a merchant ship as a stowaway after fleeing from the house the two were living in. Isi was hiding for a short time on board before someone discovered him and brought him to the captain of the ship. The men agreed to keep Isi on board so he could work to pay off his fare in lieu of throwing him overboard.
Instead of teaching young Isi the virtues of demanding work and honest living, they taught him how to make a dishonest one, by conning people and stealing whatever he could get his hands on. They did so simply because they thought it funny to watch young Isi separate men and women from their personal effects.
Isi developed a knack for taking things from women, mostly through his well-honed charm, which he summoned as quick as a man calls his dog. He became more and more brazen, raising the stakes between largess and capture. After years of conning women along a chain of islands in the middle of the Pusag Channel, Isi ran out of time and towns and opted for Flace a land of six Aeehrldoms on the north side of the Pusag Sea from Acaria.
While life on the island was grand, Isi knew all along there were not enough islands or women to last forever. Now he would need to crisscross the hard roads of Flace, enduring the bitter Freezing Months and the burning heat of the Fire Months. Isi spent only as much time as necessary in each town or village, just enough to line his pockets with some coinage. His penchant for thieving and taking advantage of widows found him being chased out of towns and villages across Flace regularly…