Entropy

     Alchemy, and even magic is based on order.  We seek to dominate randomness by lessening variance.  To describe any variable in order to account for it.  To empty the sea by removing a drop.  Any novice knows that true understanding will always be beyond them and only villains and madmen reach beyond that scope.  Our lives are similar in this respect. We group together knowing each one of us, despite our own grandiose dreams of free will, is an accounted for variable.  Good or evil, there is only a handful of actions we can accomplish in comparison with the vastness of the cosmos.  While humankind can be monstrous, inexplicable, and magnanimous it is rarely incomprehensible.  It is never beyond the realm of our imagination and therefore not truly chaotic.  Even though we do not speak of it in this way it is why we congregate.  Why we fill our kingdoms and villages.  Our ordered nature is a small fortess against the overwhelming armies of chaos, a small bastion of hope against an unknowable universe, a reason to take another drop from the ever reaching sea.  In spite of this order change does come.
     My world has become almost unrecognizable from the one the year before.  We are at war.  A plague of fungus has descended on the kingdom.  Whether magical, alchemical, or natural in nature I can not determine nor do I have the time to particularly care.  It squeezes the breath from the land's loyal subjects, and destroys the buildings it inhabits as a source of fuel and warmth.  It's own desexual aeros nature spreading it quickly as if its own version of lust.  As the only one with any such experience in these matters it is I who leads the charge.  I have only a few stalwarts left in my band now.  The Mage now oversees my day to day operations so I can general this war.  The Squire now a Knight is my veteran.  The Lieutenant finally gave in to his raging intellect.  No longer was it enough to simply exist, content to repeat the same tasks day after day, he has left to seek greater challenges.  I have released the Barbarian.  The madness of his people had finally taken hold.  He has become uncontrollable and as such a liability.  I allowed him honor in exile, a lone man left to test his skills wandering the wastes.  
   The biggest change has come from above my station.  Greater glory has beckoned my Lord to another land leaving my own position here unstable.  Another will assume his place in time and I have gone to great lengths to make myself invaluable with those that would assume his powers in the short term until one with proper parentage can be found. I am prepared for all outcomes and should I be honest with myself I would not mind a change of scenery.  My Woman also battles for position.  Soon she will be in the service of the council as a proper Alchemist so unlike the rogue I have become.  Should circumstance take her elsewhere I can't imagine I have much left to keep me here.  Surrounded by the vastness of chaos I do not fear this ordered change.  In truth I have expected it for some time, even hoped for it.  I will be ready.  Change is coming.    

A New Way Forward

      The great orb has once again slipped from its spire and a new year has begun to rise around me.  The land still gripped in Winter, I found myself content to read in my abode with a fire burning in the hearth as revelers poured from their homes to celebrate in drunken fashion throughout the land.  As many do in this time I found myself looking back.  I had gained a good many things; arcane knowledge, a trusted circle of companions, a good woman, and rank in the eyes of my Lord.  I had also lost things that even the foulest of necromancies could not bring back; my feline Hunter, and my Alchemist's title.
       I found upon taking measure of those events that the scales of fortune had swung heavily in my favor.  While my Woman stands at my side I am unbeatable.  With my esoteric knowledge I am able to continue my studies without the council, sating my own need to understand this world's curiosities. With my elevation to the Vassal of his Lordship I am able to have the small amount of power that I crave.  While seemingly content with all those things I found that I still wanted.  As if the rewards that some small amount of luck, or skill, or even the simple tangled yarns of fate had brought me had stoked the fires of my ambitions.
       I have seen through three troubled times, three winters, three days of remembrance of my own birth while living in this Kingdom.  It is longer than I have spent anywhere for the last fifteen winters.  I can feel the wanderlust rising up to take me.  I have ties to this land though; friends, property, fealty to a lord, and a love.  Ties I have been reluctant to make in every other land I have passed through.  A weakness maybe but a necessary one.  I believe these ties anchor us to our humanity.  Without these things what do we fight for?   I feel this will be a time of compromise.  I will seek out the secret paths that will allow me my freedom and my life here.  I will explore them all finding a middle ground that increases my fortune.  I will not rest on my accomplishments as I would.  I will marshal my forces and continue forward.  
       The first step is the hardest and I have begun to take it.  Complacency has taken me this last season.    My position at the Kingdom has always been one of direction from afar.  My bidding has always passed from myself through an underling that roamed the lands, of which I saw far too rarely, down to my adventurers to carry out their tasks.  Passed through my Lieutenant, Barbarian, Huntress or Ronin as I poured through the scrolls they brought me, bartered with the others of my rank when I was forced to intrude upon their domains, and insulate my men from the politics of the court.  As my powers have increased I find myself staring at more scrolls, and pouring through libraries of the large tomes that the Kingdom's Mages, Alchemists, and Metallurgists are so keen to produce.  While not a warrior, I have seen battle.  I recognize the value of exertion and toil.  My body once ready for combat through force of arms or guile and treachery is now soft with decadence.  My gold buys a good meal but does not save me from my own gluttony.  This season will be one of changes. Changes which I can only imagine will lead me to hardship and war.   I have begun training for battle.  I will not be content to sit in my castle and have fate steer me any longer.  I will seek out my path and to the gods go those that stand in my way.