Memories of My Father by Volmina Stonethew

I, Volmina Stonethew, artificer of the Veiled Alliance, do hereby testify that the proceeding information is true.

I requested and was given leave to create this avocational record by the Alliance in my spare time. I chose this course for one simple reason. I do not truly know or understand the person my father was and this drives my research.

Nobles and pampered scholars will tell you that slaves hate and fear the beatings more than anything else. I can personally assure you that this is not the case. What slaves most dread is having family members sold and then never seeing them again. I was a slave and the daughter of a slave and I know what I know. I was very young when our family was violently sundered and my mother and I were enslaved. My father was sentenced to slavery in the gladiatorial arena of Urik for some unknown and probably inconsequential crime. My mother and I were sold into slavery at the same time as a further punishment. Afterward my mother only wept when I asked where father was and eventually I learned not to bring him up. At puberty I was sold as well and I never saw my mother again.

Fate has now provided the means to learn about the father I never knew. In an old book of rituals I found a spell that allows one to summon spirits from the Grey. Significantly this ritual stimulates the memories of a spirit so that shades with sufficient willpower can recall the events of their lives on Athas.



I will now begin the ritual that will, if fortune smiles, summon the shade of my father, the dwarf Torvek Stonethew.