A book chronicling the tales of a group of pre-plague heroes: a heroic knight, a brilliant wizard, a keen archer, and a cunning thief. It is considered one of the greatest works from the pre-plague era, and can be cited as one of the building blocks of modern human literature. The author is still unknown.
Characters[]
The book is chronicled from the point of view of four characters, all performing impressive feats across the human kingdoms, and crossing one anothers paths, before finally all meeting for a final showdown, in which the knight, archer, and thief work together to end the wizards quest for ultimate power.
The Fighter is the only female protagonist but arguably the crux of the story. She is the one who gathers the archer and thief to actually take up arms and is the one who deals the final blow against the wizard. She is straightforward and direct, with strong moralistic stands that in many of her stories she is forced to bend on in order to achieve the greater righteousness. She is often in the book called "The Falcon."
The Wizard is a calm, logical man renowned in the story for his Sagacity and often referred to simply as "The Owl." He is wise beyond his years and very very powerful. However, he believes that the nature of the world is innately flawed, and had to be ended in order to set things right. He is stopped by the three other heroes, before he could enact his plan to create a chain reaction and activate every piece of ambient magic in a world-wide explosion.
The Archer is a woods-dwelling hunter, often called "The Sparrow," who is described as being "able to see the glint of anger in a mans eyes from miles away and end them without taking a step." The Archer spends his time in the story ruminating on the nature of the world from the perspective of animals and aids the Fighter in stopping the Wizard when convinced that the world truly was worth saving.
The Thief is a cunning man with nothing to his name but a blade and a skillset fine tuned for taking money. He is often referred to simply as "The Raven" and spends his time in his sections of the book partaking from the rich and trading to the poor. He has a soft spot for many but refuses to give without receiving.
Themes[]
The book primarily rests on the theme of nothing being beyond saving, specifically the world and society. It spends most of the book describing the society and even the world through its geography itself, as a bloated, self-defeating mess. Murders happen constantly, side characters that show up in stories are found murdered in others often with no care taken to describe anything but the fact that it happened, there are few reservations the anonymous author will take to show how terrible the world is. Yet the Fighter still clings to hope that it can be revived, her spoken manifesto is "I do not care that the world hates me. I do not care that the world will not help me when it kicks me to the ground. It is what I have. And I have no right to end it for simple revenge."