At long last my journey has brought me to this, the Veiled Alliance of Tyr, and in time to help bring down the mighty Witch-King Kalak, thinks Ja’Amun, I don’t know this Etheros, and it may well be a trap, but if so than all is lost anyway. I must choose to trust him either way. And I have come so very far to find them, for this very chance, I must not hesitate. The fates have brought me here for a purpose, I must see it through.

“You realize the gravity of this offer,” says Etheros. Not a question. “Once you accept you can never recant.”

“I do, Good Sir,” replies Ja’Amun.

“Then let us begin,” says Etheros, pulling a parchment scroll from his belt. “Will you say the words, friend?”

“I, Ja’Amun, do solemnly affirm my allegiance to the Veiled Alliance from this very moment until my last dying breath. I pledge my sword and my bow to the service of the Alliance, to protect those mystics who embody the preservation of our fragile planet, and to make war on those who would blithely defile Athas in their greed to attain power over the arcane. I shall endeavor to undertake whatsoever charge I am given in the defense of the people, or towards the destruction of the Sorcerer-Kings and their Templars. For as the Green Age passed into the ether, so too shall the Desert Age come to an end. By my own life’s blood do I swear!”

At this Etheros unrolls the parchment, and produces a barbed thimble on his thumb, gesturing for Ja’Amun’s hand. The prick is sharp, and quick, biting into the pad of his left thumb, welling into a dribble of blood, dark and red. Ja’Amun presses his thumb to the scroll, and looks up with something of a satisfied smirk on his stubbled face. He waves his right hand over his left, the bleeding stops.

“Do you write, friend?” Etheros asks, offering a quill with a wide grin, “if not make your mark next to the imprint.”

“You injure me, Sir” quipps Ja’Amun, taking the pen and signing his name with a flourish: Ja’Amun son of Ra’Amun of Urik – the Desert Bard, the Philosopher Rouge, the Wandering Star, freeborn man of Athas. In for a bit in for a purse, I always say.