The Life and Adventures of Benjamin Finn

Page 3

While my accomplices spent or gambled most of their earnings, I saved every gold coin I could to fufill my burning ambition of exploring Albion one day and becoming a great adventurer, such as the ones whose stories I've read about in two-penny pamphlets and third-hand story books. 

More than anything, I wanted to meet Heroes, though I knew their heyday had long passed and that the aging ruler of the kingdom was the last. 

It was the death of this ruler when I was fifteen years of age, that marked the beginning of a series of tragedies that were to befall my family. First, my eldest brother, Jason, was killed in a duel with an irate farmer, who also happened to be the husband of Jason's last sexual conquest. The duel was fought with pitchforks, and my brother, who had never worked an honest day's work in his life, made the fatal mistake of holding the farming tool the wrong way round.

It was shortly after this incident that the second eldest, William, was arrested for trying to run a con game by the wrong person: a passing plain-clothed townsguard. He was taken to Bowerstone and was never heard from again.

Then my third brother, Quentin, contrived to accumulate enough gambling debts to have a price put on his head. Quentin's death I remember most clearly of all, for I was unfortunate enough to witness it. When the assassins and bounty hunters came in to collect on his suddenly valuable head, I did what I could to protect him. But no matter how accurate the shots from my rifle, nothing could change the fact that I was shooting peas instead of bullets. I had not yet been able to afford a real weapon.

It is no surprise that the next to go was my dear mother, grief stricken by the loss of three of her children. She left my father a drunken widower, though drunk only when he could afford it, poverty having made his attempts to drown his sorrows all the harder.

While I did what I could to help out in his shop, employing all my charm and wit to become a highly persuasive salesman, it was plain that there was never going to be much of a market for novelty toothbrushes in such a small village. And one which had made such a conscious effort to avoid any form of oral hygiene at that.

Soon my father passed away, too, far more sober than he would have liked. It was then I resolved to leave Gunk for good, and to seek my fortunes and adventures elsewhere in the kingdom of Albion.